David Hewson's comments about his next book:

The fifth book in the Nic Costa series, The Seventh Sacrament, will be published in the UK in January 2007, and later the same year in the US. The book sees Costa and his colleagues back in Rome, facing the revival of a cold case which Leo Falcone first tackled as a mid-ranking officer years before.

A former archaeology professor has been released from jail for the murder of a student he believed to be responsible for the disappearance of his son. But the events around the loss of the child are more arcane than they first appear, and involve the revival of the rites of the lost cult of Mithras, and a lust for vengeance which, for Costa and his friends, will soon become very personal indeed.
(© David Hewson)

When young Alessio Bramante vanished, there was plenty of blame to go around. His father, a charismatic professor of archaeology, inexplicably left Alessio alone near a labyrinth of ancient tunnels and excavations. Six of the professor’s university students, fueled by booze and bravado, involved the boy in their own bizarre ritual at an altar of the ancient warrior god Mithras. And then there were the police: a commanding officer left Giorgio Bramante alone with the prime suspect, allowing Alessio’s father to beat the man to death.

After years in prison, Giorgio has been set free and, one by one, those connected to the boy’s disappearance are dying. As Costa and his fellow detectives scramble to find Giorgio, they are thrust into a darkening web of hidden perversions and secret passions past and present.
Because at the heart of this case–as close and as far away as Rome’s underground treasures–is the unanswered question: what really happened to little Alessio Bramante fourteen years ago–and why was his body never found?
(©Delacorte Press)