Customer Reviews

Villa of Mysteries (Nic Costa)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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

As a reader of many, many mysteries, I'm not easily taken
in and caught up by plots any more, but this book is the
exception to the rule. I loved the setting (Rome), the
characters, and most of all the surprises that continued to
catch me off guard. This is my first Hewson mystery, and I
am looking forward to reading "Season of the Dead" very
soon.

The story is great - police and mother try to track down a missing daughter. The story behind her being missing is really creepy - an ancient Roman ritual that leaves nothing to the imagination. There are some very good twists in the novel, and some parts that I am still having trouble understanding (drug use toward the end). Overall, it was a good read.

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

Hewson's novel is a waste of good talent. He's clearly capable of more fluid writing and characterization than the jumbled, piecemeal story placed before us.

The story revolves around a cult of Dionysius that engages in sexual epicurianism and drug use. Things went awry at one of the parties years ago; and when the victim's body turns up in a Roman suburbian bog, the police are called in to investigate. The characters are predictable and trite, and the plot never seems to connect at all the appropriate points. The ending is a letdown, and I don't think I'll be following any of the future adventures of Nic Costa, et al.

I read the last book with these characters and enjoyed it mostly so I thought I'd give this book a try. What a mistake. The plot was just too out there to follow, the characters are poorly defined (i.e., the all "sound" the same so it's hard to determine who is speaking), and the drug use didn't seem to have any purpose at all. Additionally, the book just didn't seem to flow well when read. Too many thoughts left out perhaps.

David Hewson's second mystery novel featuring Roman Detective Nic Costa is engaging enough but fall far short of the expectations set by the first book - "A Season For the Dead".

Recovering from the physical and psychological wounds of the first novel, Nic Costa finds himself returning to the Questare in the midst of a kidnapping of a teenage tourist that uncovers the tip of an iceberg whereby a secrte society may have been operating illicitly for years. The story and high number of continuous characters grows with the tale and at times is overpowering. Coupled with a slightly confusing opening sequence that jumps back and forth in time, I found myself more distracted than interested in this tale. However, Hewson's writing style is strong and Nic Costa is a solid hero. You don't come away with as much of picture of Roman life as the first story presented but still get a glimpse of the corruption that effects this city like all large cities in the world.

I look forward to the next one and hope to learn more about the complex Nic Costa and haunting city of Rome.

Although there's an interesting ensemble cast and the background of ancient and modern Rome, I found the story a bit disjointed, in part because you have Italians written by an Englishman, sounding like Americans. But there is good suspense and several very good twists.