The Sacred Cut [Import] [Hardcover]

David Hewson (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: MacMillan (2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 140500049X
• ISBN-13: 978-1405000499
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,549,453 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

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Keeps getting better, June 30, 2007

By 

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

This review is from: The Sacred Cut (Mass Market Paperback)

Reviewers of this book seem divided, and I have to agree with those who enjoyed The Sacred Cut. What I admire about author Hewson is simply that he is a literate writer who knows how to create likeable, thoroughly human protagonists. They're not typical, they're not omnipotent, they're not even at the top of their field or their game. Nic is just learning, and gets better with every case. Peroni is a good cop who's made a serious mistake but takes responsibility for his own choices. Teresa is a tough as nails pathologist who is scared about love but willing to stick her neck out and hope for the best. As for his villains, Hewson also makes them credibly human. Terribly twisted but human. Some of the passages relating the killer's train of thought are downright chilling. While technically a police procedural, The Sacred Cut is more a story of ordinary, well-trained people trying to solve a horrendous crime and prevent its repetition while preserving their own sense of morality. If the plotting has flaws, they are more than over-ridden by Hewson's characterizations and by his remarkably cliche-free prose. The setting in the timeless city of Rome is icing on the cake.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, January 24, 2006

By 

Henry W. Wagner (Rockaway, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Sacred Cut (Hardcover)

It's five days before Christmas, and Rome is covered in snow. Braving the elements on this cold winter night are policemen Nic Costa and Gianni Peroni, accompanied by civilian Mauro Sandri. A photographer, Sandri is assembling a documentary on the policeman and their city.

Summoned to the Pantheon by a shaken security guard, the policemen are ambushed by an intruder, who begins shooting before fleeing into the night. The policemen are unharmed, but the photographer is fatally wounded. Later, a woman's body, bearing knife marks in the elaborate pattern of the so-called Sacred Cut, is found on the premises. Seeking justice for the photographer, Costa and Peroni begin searching for the murderer; their investigation will bring them into conflict with one of the strangest killers they've ever faced, a man out to settle scores with origins in the days of Desert Storm.

A happy blend of police procedural and international thriller, Hewson's third Nic Costa novel finds the trinity of Costa, Peroni, and their Chief, the irascible Leo Falcone, in fine form, fearlessly grappling with criminals, bureaucracies, significant others, and the American intelligence community in their pursuit of the truth. Providing laughter and thrills in equal amounts, Hewson makes it look easy.

The Sacred Cut is totally compelling, one of those rare thrillers which emphasizes character over action, although Hewson acquits himself admirably in that department as well. It's the attention Hewson lavishes on his entire cast that keeps readers' interest piqued; all the rest, as they say, is gravy.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down!, February 6, 2006

By 

J. D. Fegler (Chesterfield, VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Sacred Cut (Hardcover)

I picked up this book because of the snowy scene of Rome on the cover. It's been a not-so-snowy winter here, so I thought I'd make up for it with a snowy novel. This was an excellent book and truly transported me. It was an intelligent novel with many twista and turns taking place over three days near Christmas. Hewson's characters are well developed and the end left me sympathetic to many of them and hoping for more in his upcoming novel to be relased in 2007. I'm going to go back and read some of his earlier novels in this Nic Costa series while waiting for "The Lizard's Bite" to be relased.