The Lizard's Bite [Hardcover]

David Hewson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2006

On an August night on a small island near Venice, a fire explodes in a glassmaking shop. When help arrives, two people are dead, a rich Englishman is implicated, and investigators from Rome are assigned a case no one wants them to solve....In this spellbinding new novel featuring Detective Nic Costa, author David Hewson weaves together the rich fabric of Europe’s most beguiling city with a riveting tale of passion, corruption, and the poisonous bite of betrayal.

On their private island, the Arcangelo family defy the world: living in a decaying palazzo, making glass in a terrifying, archaic furnace, watching their absurd exhibition hall sink into disrepair. But now the world is coming to their dying outpost in a crumbling corner of a Venice that tourists never see. Police boats and vaporetti bring investigators, curiosity seekers, and one man who plans to own the property himself. With two family members consumed by the foundry fire, both mystery and opportunity have been bared to the bone.

On special assignment from Rome, Detective Nic Costa, along with his partner, his boss, and a dogged pathologist named Teresa Lupo, is getting in the way of progress, Venetian-style. They know that Uriel Arcangelo and his wife were murdered. They know that a predatory Englishman must be a suspect, as is the family of the murdered woman. And while everyone wants the Roman cops to give up and go home, they can’t–because a matter of desire, death, and lies has just turned murderously on one of them....

A tale as bewitching as its lush backdrop, The Lizard’s Bite is an astounding alchemy of superb writing, vibrant atmosphere, and sheer, gripping suspense.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. British author Hewson's wonderfully complex and finely paced fourth crime novel (after 2005's The Sacred Cut) to feature Roman detective Nic Costa and his unconventional partner, Gianni Peroni, finds the pair exiled to Venice, where they look into the case of glassmaker Uriel Arcangelo, who apparently killed his wife, Bella, then committed suicide. Instead of coming to the foreordained conclusion higher authority demands, Costa and Peroni determine, "We're no longer trying to understand the means Uriel Arcangelo used to kill his wife. But why, how and with whom the late Bella appears to have conspired to kill him." An urbane and wealthy Englishman who wants to buy the Isolo di Archangeli glassworks becomes an important suspect. Hewson is particularly strong on characterization, revealing each personality subtly and naturally as he or she reacts to the intricate plot developments. Newcomers as well as series fans will be enthralled. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

At the end of Hewson's superb Sacred Cut (2005), Roman cops Nic Costa and Gianni Peroni, along with their maverick boss, Leo Falcone, were all in jeopardy, having both outfoxed and offended the Eternal City's leading powerbrokers. Now exiled to Venice, Costa and Peroni find themselves with another hot-potato case on their hands. After being reunited with Falcone, the pair is offered a chance to return to Rome if they will rubber stamp a murder investigation on the island of Murano, where a glassmaker apparently has killed his wife and then died himself when the furnace he was tending exploded. Naturally, Costa and Peroni smell a fix and can't resist following the scent. The setup here stretches credulity a bit--Why ask three notorious rule breakers to go through the motions?--but Hewson takes the story well beyond its genre-bound premise, mixing Venetian ambience ("the lethargic melancholy of the lagoon") and the lore of glassmaking with a multifaceted examination of his characters' (especially Falcone's) dark sides. A richly ambiguous finale only adds to the pleasure. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Press (October 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385339550
• ISBN-13: 978-0385339551
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #629,136 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

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You can't outrun the devil, March 28, 2008

By 

Linda Pagliuco "katknit" (CT, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Lizard's Bite (Mass Market Paperback)

Sequel to 2 previous installments involving Nic Costa, partner Peroni, and Commissario Falcone, Lizard's Bite is more mystery than thriller. Two members, husband and wife, of a Murano glassmaking family are found dead in their own fornace, which has gone up in flames. Exiled to Venice for offending the powers that be in their own Rome police hierarchy, Costa and colleagues are assigned to close what looks like a cut and dried case. Who should emerge in the midst of the ashes but the enigmatic and powerful Hugo Massiter, who was heavily involved in a previous crime.
Of course, in Venice, nothing is what it seems on the surface. The Roman cops are drawn inexorably into a complex web of death, lies, coverups, and stings, at their own great peril. Author Hewson further develops the characters of his big 3, as well as those of their lady loves, who are every bit as courageous as their men. Lizard starts slowly, then builds little by little, surprise by surprise, to its unexpected conclusion. We already have Lizard's sequel, The Seventh Sacrament, on our shelf, and I can't wait to see what happens next. I like these people.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thrilling and fun novel by one of the finest mystery writers today, November 22, 2006

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lizard's Bite (Hardcover)

David Hewson may well be the finest mystery writer of our time. In my humble opinion, he's also one of our best contemporary writers, period. There are elements of Agatha Christie, Graham Greene and William Shakespeare in his work, but when you sit down and crack the spine of A SEASON OF THE DEAD or THE VILLA OF MYSTERIES, what you have is all and uniquely Hewson.

Which brings us to THE LIZARD'S BITE, Hewson's latest work to be published in the United States. It is the fourth book in a series of novels featuring Italian policeman Nic Costa, who, along with his partner, Gianni Peroni, has been exiled to Venice. Reunions abound in the opening chapters --- some welcome, some not. All, however, are intriguing, not the least of which is the return of Inspector Leo Falcone, who has been laboring in Verona. But the trio is quickly put in the untenable position of investigating a pair of deaths for which the powers that be --- both official and unofficial --- have preordained the result.

The situs of the murders is the Isola del Arcangeli, a factory that produced unique, highly priced and prized glass pieces for decades. But the factory and the Arcangelo family are suffering from a thousand cuts: an archaic furnace, cheap knockoffs, a falling demand. When Uriel, one of the Arcangelo brothers, is found dead in a fire at the factory, and the body of his wife Bella is discovered stuffed in the furnace, it is obvious to the local authorities that Uriel killed Bella and then died accidentally.

Costa and Peroni are directed to make short work of an inverted pyramid investigation, with their reward being an early return to Rome. The conclusion is pre-ordained, as far as the local authorities are concerned. Hewson lets his readers know just enough to realize that the conclusion is dead wrong. The fun is watching how the police slowly deconstruct the obvious conclusion, deduce the correct one and then bring the culprit(s) to justice.

Hewson peppers THE LIZARD'S BITE with a number of interesting --- and fascinating --- factoids about places and subjects that compel the reader to find out more on their own. But this common thread (among others) through Hewson's novels is not performed by rote. Think instead of a tightrope walker who performs his work daily for the same audience but introduces a new, and jeopardous, element every time. That's a Hewson novel. Very highly recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars THe plot twists kept me going, August 9, 2007

By 

L. J. Roberts (Oakland, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Lizard's Bite (Mass Market Paperback)

First Sentence: In the shifting darkness of the vessel's bowels, low over the undulating black water, the animal waited, trembling.

Roman police officers Nick Costa and Gianni Peroni think they are going to get some time off with their girlfriends, former FBI agent Emily Deacon and pathologist Teresa Lupo. But things change when their boss, Leo Falcone shows up and the three of them are told they are to investigate the deaths of a Moreno glass worker and his wife. But the pressure is on as wealthy Englishman, Hugo Massiter is about to buy the island currently owned by the victim's family. The three policemen are told to investigate the deaths quickly and verify the man killed his wife and then died of spontaneous combustion. With the help of their girlfriends, the three policemen finds things are not as simple as hoped.

As a big Donna Leon fan, this was an interesting perspective of Roman policemen working in Venice. Many of the things Leon's Insp. Brunelli loves about Venice, these detectives hate. However, the corruption of some of the Italian police remains a consistent theme. There are a lot of interesting characters, but the story was short on character development. It was really the twists and turns along the way that kept me reading.