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At the start of THE FALLEN ANGEL, David Hewson's latest Nic Costa thriller, Malise Gabriel, an expatriate academic, falls from a balcony to his death. Was it an accident? Was it suicide? Was it murder? All of these possibilities have weight as the story unfolds. His family—Mina, his beautiful teenage daughter, Cecelia, his imperious widow, and Robert, his drug-dealing son--all seem to have layers of secrets. Mina's grief at her father's death is accompanied by her morbid fascination and seeming identification with a medieval woman named Beatrice Cenci. Cenci was accused of killing her abusive father and put to death by the Vatican in 1599, although the streets were filled with people rallying for her to be spared. Did Mina's father abuse her too? Who is the naked woman in the picture found in the apartment? And why did the owner of the building, Joanne Van Doren, throw out all of the family's possessions before the police could go through them? Nic Costa is supposed to be on vacation. It is the heat of an August summer in Rome and everyone who can, it seems, has left the city. The investigators are having a hard time getting anything done. Nic befriends Mina and is drawn into the case that begins to take shape around her and her family. Soon he is called back into active duty and begins to investigate what has become a series of murders. Hewson is a literate writer and his characters have depth and compelling narratives. As the story progresses, we get different views on the martyr from the past. We also get different views on who killed whom and why in the present. At a point when I was only half way through the book, I went to my local library and took out three other Hewson works, two of the Nic Costa series and one a stand-alone. Yes, the book and the writing is that good. THE FALLEN ANGEL is the ninth in the series, but there is no real need to have started at the first. Hewson drops some tantalizing clues in this book about some of Costa's previous cases, and some of the people we meet clearly have a history with him, but you do not have to have read the forerunners to appreciate the latest. If you like mysteries steeped in the atmosphere of Rome, or are already a Nic Costa fan, you will welcome this book. Even if you are neither, there is much to absorb and intrigue you here. Do not think that you know who the murderers and the victims really are until the very end. Anne Corey is a writer, poet, teacher and botanical artist in New York's Hudson Valley.
Reviewed by Anne Corey, May 2011
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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