The Villa of Mysteries

Rating:
Summary: fine detective tale
Review: Though six months of leave to recover physically from his wounds and mentally from the death of his partner seems a long time to Roman Detective Nic Costa, he has doubts about returning to work which include the skills of his new partner Gianni Peroni. Still he returns so his superior assigns him the case of visiting Americans Bobby and Lianne Dexter who found a corpse of a teenage girl near the Ostia Antica coastal harbor.

The cops quickly realize that the girl was murdered in recent times and not during the Roman Empire era though the preserved garb would speak otherwise. Though police pathologist Teresa Lupo initially blows the murder date by two millennium give or take a century, she, Nic and Gianni soon learn that the victim is the 16-year-old stepdaughter of mobster Virgil Wallis and that another teen is missing. Worse the anti-Mafia task force is interfering as the two cops investigate, but get nowhere losing hope to save the second abducted teen from a sacrificial ritual murderer(s).

Nic is a fine detective whose skills are ordinary, but he never quits even though he faces emotional trauma every time he works the field. Gianni is more amiable but also has plenty of woes to overcome. Teresa and anti-Mafia Agent Rachale D'Amato provide the impetus to keep digging. Though the case resolves abruptly in spite of the lead cops misinterpreting clues, fans will enjoy the return of Nic Costa though his second appearance is not quite as stellar as his superb pulled in two directions efforts in A SEASON FOR THE DEAD.

Harriet Klausner



Rating:
Summary: This is a work, and an author, of unforgettable stature
Review: Until a couple of years ago David Hewson was known primarily as a correspondent for the London Sunday Times. A more rooted, and smarter, friend of mine who reads that publication regularly makes Hewson's dispatch his first visit. Hewson's noteworthy contribution is his ability to make the complex understandable. This quality has been a hallmark of his novels, which combine artistic, religious and cultural elements, and send them swirling through a complex but readily understandable plot peopled by characters who, while foreign to American readers, easily earn their empathy. While Hewson's work is firmly rooted in the tradition of police procedural novels, he refuses to color within the lines; he instead quietly but firmly redrafts the boundary lines of the genre, combining poetic prose, exquisite plotting, and an inexhaustible supply of surprises to create a genre all his own.

THE VILLA OF MYSTERIES is the successor to 2003's A SEASON FOR THE DEAD, the second of what Hewson refers to as "The Rome Novels." Police Detective Nic Costa is back, newly returned to duty after several months' absence to recover from the death of his father as well as other events. Costa does not have much time to get his street legs back. An American couple looking for Roman artifacts in a peat bog discovers the body of a young woman named Eleanor Jamieson who vanished almost two decades previously.

The Italian police force and pathologist Teresa Lupo are still sorting out this discovery when Costa interjects himself into the middle of a situation in Campo dei Fiori, a crowded tourist destination. A woman is frantically seeking police assistance, insisting that her daughter has been abducted. The woman's daughter bears an uncanny, almost frightening, resemblance to Jamieson --- and her abduction has occurred nearly 16 years to the day of the anniversary of Jamieson's disappearance. It appears that both abductions, and Jamieson's murder, are tied to a cult of the god Dionysus. The truth, however, is both stranger and simpler than that.

Costa and Gianni Peroni, his new partner, find themselves in more of a reactive than a proactive position. It is Lupo who steps outside of her job description to obtain justice for one long-dead young woman and to hopefully rescue another. Yet, as the reader and all concerned discover, nothing is really as it seems. Hewson does not even attempt to explain the labyrinthine and uneasy connections between the Italian police and organized crime, and the always blurry line that is both a line of demarcation and commonality between the two. But he illustrates it so sharply through anecdotal description that one comes away with an understanding that is difficult to articulate yet easy to know.

Hewson does not wait until the end of the novel to begin reigning in his numerous plot lines. He chooses instead to introduce and resolve issues from beginning to end, so that at the conclusion of this magnificent work, there is no sense of a rush to resolution, even as --- unbeknownst to the reader --- there is much to be resolved.

But the depth of what Hewson has accomplished goes beyond his considerable plotting and narrative skills. For what Hewson has created in THE VILLA OF MYSTERIES may be arguably one of the most strongly and subtly feminist novels of recent note. The women at the beginning of this book are all victims; by the end, things are not the same. This is a work, and an author, of unforgettable stature.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub