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The Dante Killings: A Thriller (Nic Costa)
 
 
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The Dante Killings: A Thriller (Nic Costa) [Mass Market Paperback]

David Hewson (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)

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Book Description

Nic Costa April 27, 2010
On a warm, golden evening in Rome, celebrities and paparazzi gather at the Villa Borghese as a legendary director premieres his long-anticipated film version of Dante’s Inferno. But minutes later the scene is chaos: A man lies dead, the film’s star is missing, and a priceless relic has vanished.
 
As the premiere shifts locations—from Rome to San Francisco—detective Nic Costa finds himself on U.S. shores for the first time, charged with protecting a trove of rare Italian artworks and artifacts, as well as an American film actress, Maggie Flavier. When a killer indeed strikes, and with Flavier in danger, Costa races to unravel the chilling clues that connect Dante’s nine circles of Hell to the shattering revelations of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. But he may be too late. For a cunning plot is closing in around Costa, guided by a poet’s ancient vision of sin and punishment and a killer’s genius for terror.
 
Previously published as Dante's Numbers.

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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

It was to have been the triumphant swan song for a revered Italian film director—the premiere in Rome of his long-awaited movie version of Dante’s Inferno. But before the lights go down, chaos reigns: a man is dead, the film’s star has disappeared, and a priceless relic, Dante’s death mask, has been stolen. The trail leads to San Francisco, where Rome police detective Nic Costa, along with partner Gianni Peroni and their boss, Leo Falcone, are part of a team charged with ensuring the safety of other relics that will be part of an exhibit at Golden Gate Park set to open in tandem with the rescheduled premiere. But, of course, Hewson’s three maverick detectives want to get involved in the murder investigation itself, technically the province of their institutional rivals, the Carabiniere, and soon enough they are end-running around not only their Italian counterparts but also the San Francisco police. Hewson is a master at convoluted, many-tentacled plots that weave their way through history and back to the present, but this time he doubles the stakes: we start with Dante and the iconography of his Inferno and wind up reliving the plot of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. That’s a lot ground to cover in one novel—perhaps too much—but from scene to scene, Hewson never loses the reader’s attention, and for fans of this outstanding series, the latest chapter in the interlocked lives of Costa and friends, while overstuffed, is as delicious as ever. --Bill Ott --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"The return of Nic Costa is a true cause for celebration! A literate, page-turning tale that finds our hero—one of the most appealing in crime fiction—zipping between two of the most iconic cities in the world: Rome and San Francisco. Hewson is a daunting talent—a writer who is a master stylist, who respects his audience's intelligence, and who effortlessly keeps the thrills coming a mile a minute."–Jeffery Deaver, New York Times bestselling author

"One of my all-time favorite fictional detectives is David Hewson's Nic Costa, and Dante's Numbers brings Nic for the first time to American shores. From the opening scene of murder and mayhem at a movie premiere to the final, mind-blowing surprise, Dante's Numbers is an elegant, clever, and terrifying tale of intrigue and murder involving Dante's first circle of Hell and Hitchcock's classic film Vertigo. An outstanding novel."—Douglas Preston, author of The Monster of Florence and Blasphemy.

"David Hewson is one of the finest thriller writers working today. A born stylist. Dante's Numbers is politically wise, multi-dimensional, and psychologically intuitive. Action braids suspense on nearly every page, creating a reader's delight from beginning to end. A superb effort by a master storyteller. The rest of the world already knows how good David is. Now, it's time America find out." —Steve Berry

" Dante's Numbers is action-packed suspense at its smartest and most gripping. Transplanting Nic Costa and his fellow Italian detectives to the dizzying world of Hitchock's 'Vertigo' is a master stroke from a brilliant author. It's impossible not to be swept up in the memorable, compelling world that is David Hewson's specialty."–David Morrell

"Easily the best in a really terrific series."—Lee Child

“Hewson is a master at convoluted, manytentacled plots that weave their way through history and back to the present.” —Booklist

“[In] Hewson’s fine seventh crime novel to feature Nic Costa…. A convoluted plot, eccentric characters and numerous sinister connections to Hitchcock’s Vertigo all contribute to the suspense.” —Publishers Weekly



From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

  • Mass Market Paperback: 544 pages
  • Publisher: Dell (April 27, 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0385341490
  • ISBN-13: 978-0385341493
  • Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1.1 x 6.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #401,558 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Hewson's novels have been translated into a wide range of languages, from Italian to Japanese, and his debut work, Semana Santa, set in Holy Week Spain, was filmed with Mira Sorvino. Dante's Numbers is his thirteenth published novel.

David was born in Yorkshire in 1953 and left school at the age of seventeen to work as a cub reporter on one of the smallest evening newspapers in the country in Scarborough. Eight years later he was a staff reporter on The Times in London, covering news, business and latterly working as arts correspondent. He worked on the launch of the Independent and was a weekly columnist for the Sunday Times for a decade before giving up journalism entirely in 2005 to focus on writing fiction.

Semana Santa won the WH Smith Fresh Talent award for one of the best debut novels of the year in 1996 and was later made into a movie starring Mira Sorvino and Olivier Martinez. Four standalone works followed before A Season for the Dead, the first in a series set in Italy. The seventh Roman novel featuring Nic Costa and his colleagues, Dante's Numbers, appeared in October 2008. At the end of 2006 he signed renewed contracts with Pan Macmillan in the UK and Bantam Dell in the US to extend the series to nine books, running to 2012. The titles are published in numerous languages around the world including Chinese and Japanese... and Italian.

He has featured regularly on the speaker lists of leading international book events, including the Melbourne and Ottawa writers' festivals, the Harrogate Crime Festival, Thrillerfest, Bouchercon and Left Coast Crime. He has taught at writing schools around the world and is a regular faculty member for the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference in Corte Madera, California, where he has worked alongside writers such as Martin Cruz Smith and Michael Connelly.

 

Customer Reviews

12 Reviews
5 star:
 (4)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (2)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Watch "Vertigo" before you read this book., July 11, 2009
This review is from: Dante's Numbers (Hardcover)
As someone who lived in San Francisco for 20 years, and just watched Vertigo on-line as soon as I saw it mentioned in the book, reading "Dante's Numbers" was a total delight. And that's saying something for a suspense novel with brutal murders - but I loved it and highly recommend it. This is a perfect book for people who enjoy San Francisco, Hitchcock and David Hewson.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Psychological shenanigans that make this novel first rate, April 21, 2009
This review is from: Dante's Numbers (Hardcover)
Many times, psychological twists in a novel are the mark of an insecure writer -- one who does not trust his characters to carry his story -- or a writer who defines a novel as nothing but plot shenanigans. These folks tend to hammer out improbable plot and psychological twists that have no merit except that of being unusual.

I read for character and writing style, not tricks or twists, although those can be nice. This novel it all. It's the best Hewson novel I've read, and one of the best books I've read lately, period.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Bewildering, April 30, 2009
By 
Sherry Christie (Jonesport, Maine) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dante's Numbers (Hardcover)
I've been a fan of David Hewson's Nic Costa series for a long time, so I expected good things when Hewson brought Costa and his cohorts to the U.S. to guard Italian artifacts being loaned to a California museum. Unfortunately, this turned out to be the weirdest book in the series, with a very peculiar set of crimes (peculiar in the sense of hard to believe), sort of linked to the old movie Vertigo. Most discouraging of all, there was no character development -- something Hewson has managed with great skill in the previous books based in Rome. It felt to me as if he was just pushing action figures through a very contrived plot. As long as Mr. H. doesn't let Nic marry the American love interest in this book, we may hope for better results with the next one.
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