Product Description: In the ancient burial ground of San Michele on an island off Venice, a young woman's casket is prised open, an object wrenched from her hands, and an extraordinary story begins. Young academic Daniel Forster arrives in Venice working for the summer in the library of a private collector. When his employer sends him to buy a stolen violin from a petty thief, he ignites a chain of violence, deception, intrigue and murder. Daniel is drawn into the police investigation surrounding a beautiful woman, a mysterious palazzo and a lost musical masterpiece dating back to 1733. Separated by centuries, two tales of passion, betrayal and danger collide transporting the reader from the intrigue of Vivaldi's Venice to the gritty world of a modern detective. From the genius of prodigy to the greed of a killer, "The Cemetery of Secrets" builds to a shattering crescendo - and one last, breathtaking surprise.|
(© Pan Books)
ORIGINAL JACKET NOTES: Venice 1733: young Lorenzo Scacchi has just arrived in the city to work for his uncle at the renowned printing press of Ca' Scacchi. Awed by Venice's splendour, Lorenzo discovers a world of possibilities he has never before dreamed of. But he finds a darker side too. Ordered by his uncle to chaperone a beautiful and gifted violinist who cannot openly reveal her identity, Lorenzo is drawn into a dangerous game of deception, with horrifying consequences.
More than 250 years later, a young Englishman, Daniel Forster, comes to Venice for a summer job and is immediately seduced by the city's beauty and exoticism. Cataloguing a library in the Ca' Scacchi, Daniel discovers the manuscript of an anonymous eighteenth-century concerto. Soon he has become involved in an elaborate scam, leading to a vertiginous spiral of criminal conspiracy and erotic pursuit.
David Hewson brilliantly interweaves two stories of intrigue and corruption, set centuries apart, and eventually draws them together in a stunning double-twist ending. Complex, beautiful, suspenseful, ‘Lucifer’s Shadow’ is Hewson's most tantalising and rewarding novel yet.
(©HarperCollins Publishers)
AUTHOR'S COMMENTS: When Daniel Forster, a young Englishman, arrives in Venice for a summer job, he soon finds that the city's glittering facade masks a much darker reality. Cataloguing a library of old manuscripts, Daniel discovers a lost musical masterpiece. Slowly he is drawn into a web of dramatic pursuits spanning three centuries, from the Venice of Vivaldi and Rousseau to the present day.
A story of love, music and temptation that joins two different eras Lucifer's Shadow is a unique blend of historical drama and contemporary crime, set around famous locations such as 'Vivaldi's church', La Pieta, and some of Venice's lesser-known sights.
(© David Hewson)
