Lucifer's Shadow

Zusatztext "Intelligent and highly-detailed ... rivals Perez-Reverte's The Flanders Panel in historical intricacy! complexity of motive! and multileveled storytelling.... Prepare for a devilish ride." -- Booklist ! starred review Informationen zum Autor David Hewson is the author of nine novels. Formerly a weekly columnist for the Sunday Times, he lives in Kent, England, where he is at work on his next crime novel, Dante’s Numbers, which Delacorte will publish in 2009. Klappentext In an ancient burial ground on an island off Venice! a young woman's casket is pried open! an object is wrenched from her hands! and an extraordinary adventure begins. From the moment he arrives in Venice! Daniel Forster is seduced by the city's mystery and eroticism. An earnest young academic! Daniel has come for a summer job cataloguing a private collector's library. But when Daniel's employer sends him to buy a stolen violin from a petty thief! a chain reaction of violence and deception ignites. Suddenly Daniel is drawn into a police investigation—and a tempest swirling around a beautiful woman! a mysterious palazzo! and a lost musical masterpiece dating back centuries. With each step he takes! Daniel unwittingly retraces a journey that began in 1733! when another young man came to Venice. And when! in this realm of intrigue and beauty! two lovers came face-to-face with a killer—and a mystery was born. Separated by centuries! two tales of passion! betrayal! and danger collide in David Hewson's dazzling novel. Sweeping us from the intrigue of Vivaldi's Venice to the gritty world of a modern cop! from the genius of a prodigy to the greed of a killer! Lucifer's Shadow builds to a shattering crescendo—and one last! breathtaking surprise. 1 San Michele He remembered to wear black. The cheap, thin suit from Standa. Shiny office shoes. A pair of fake Ray-Ban Predators stolen from some Japanese tourist straight off the coach at Piazzale Roma. Rizzo lit a cigarette and waited by the gatehouse at San Michele. It was the first Sunday in July. The lagoon was entering summer, the change marked by the chittering of swallows above his head and a torpid heat rising from the water. A spirited breeze rippled the cypresses that dotted the cemetery like exclamation marks. In the shade of an alcove to his right, discreetly hidden, was an ordered stack of empty pine coffins. Rizzo watched something move in a beam of sunlight catching the corner of the nearest casket. A small lizard, dots running down its spine, dashed into the patch of gold, paused, then scurried back into the cracked brickwork. Some job, Rizzo thought. Getting paid for checking up on a corpse. The cemetery supervisor came out of his office and stared at the cigarette until Rizzo stamped it out. The man was short and fat, sweating in his bright white cotton shirt. He looked about forty, with a thick head of greasy hair and a weedy moustache like a comb snapped in half then stuck above a pair of fleshy lips. "You got the papers?" Rizzo nodded and tried to offer him half a smile. The supervisor wore a sour look, as if he suspected something was wrong. Rizzo was twenty-five but could pass for thirty dressed like this. Still, he guessed he looked a little young to be claiming possession of some stray cadaver, as if it were luggage left to be retrieved from a locker at the station. He pulled out the documents the Englishman had given him that morning in the big, palatial apartment behind the Guggenheim Gallery. Massiter said they'd work. They'd cost enough. "You're a relative?" the supervisor asked, staring at the lines of fine type on the page. "Cousin," Rizzo replied. "No other family?" "All gone." "Huh." The man folded up the papers and stuffed them in his pocket. "You could have waited another four weeks, you kno...

Product details

• Authors: David Hewson
• Publisher: Random House USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 26.07.2005
• EAN: 9780385338059
• ISBN: 978-0-385-33805-9
• No. of pages: 384
• Dimensions: 155 mm x 230 mm x 22 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense > Crime fiction, thrillers, espionage