David Hewson's comments about his new book:

At the end of The Sacred Cut, Costa and company are kicked out of Rome because of their bad behaviour and exiled to Venice. At the start of Lizard, we’re on Murano, the glass-making island next to Venice proper, in the glass blowing furnace of a strange, failing family called the Arcangeli. A brother is found dead in the furnace; it appears he’s killed his wife and put her body in the oven, and either killed himself or been killed accidentally afterwards.

Costa, Falcone and Peroni, who are near the end of their Venice stint, are told by the local police to clear the case up promptly, and quickly, since the Arcangeli’s property is about to be sold in a big and important deal to an Englishman, Hugo Massiter. Falcone is a bit sniffy about the thing - he thinks Venice is a provincial backwater. But they get on with the job and find things really aren’t what they seem; they’re in a big local quagmire of money deals and other dubious activities.

Falcone thinks this will be a cinch to clear up. But in a way this is a story about hubris; the Romans are, though they don’t really know it, out of their depth. One of them very much so. I won’t give away the story but one almost loses his life, and another very nearly loses something very important to him. The story is softer, perhaps more traditional crime, than the earlier novels, and reflects the Venetian location. But this isn’t the normal Venice - it’s Murano, a backwater where people (in real life) are struggling to make a living in difficult times. The book also fits in with an earlier standalone of mine Lucifer’s Shadow; some of the Venetian characters appeared there. So expect a different atmosphere - very Venice, though not a part most people know - a lot of character interplay that will tell you much more, in particular about Leo Falcone, and plenty of surprises at the end.
(© David Hewson)

Synopsis: Things are looking up for Nic Costa and Gianni Peroni - their humiliating exile in Venice is nearly at an end, and their long-awaited holiday is about to begin. So when they are ordered to investigate an apparently open-and-shut case, a fire in a glass foundry that has claimed two lives, all they want is to wrap it up quickly. However, as they dig more deeply into the insular glass-making region of Murano and the strange Arcangeli family, things don't quite add up. Under pressure from above to finish quickly so that urbane British millionaire Hugo Massiter's property deal can be concluded, events spiral quickly out of control with devastating consequences...When they realise that the only verdict the local police are interested in is accidental death and a speedily closed file, Costa and Peroni find themselves embroiled in a clandestine and dangerous investigation into the shadowy world that lies beneath Venice's sparkling facade - and where the usual rules do not apply.
(© Macmillan)