The first of the Nic Costa series.
Sara Farnese is a professor of early Christianity at the
University of Rome. One day she is working quietly in the Vatican Reading Room when
one of her colleagues enters the room behaving very strangely. He pulls the
evidence of an appallingly grisly crime from a plastic shopping bag and then
proceeds to wave a gun in her face. While she tries to make sense of his
bizarre behavior and confusing words he is shot dead by an overzealous security
guard.
Sitting in their car just outside St Peter’s Square,
Detective Nic Costa and his new partner, Luca Rossi, hear the calls for help
over the Swiss Guard radio frequency that Nic is monitoring out of heat-induced
boredom. Although they have no jurisdiction in the Vatican State, they are the
first detectives on the scene and are soon embroiled in a disturbing series of
bizarre murders where each victim is killed and presented as a martyred saint.
Constantly blocked by the security officials in the Vatican and possible corruption
within his own police force, Nic struggles to solve the mystery of the murders
and how they are all connected to the beautiful, but enigmatic, Farnese woman.
Before I write my review I have to be honest about one thing
that seriously biased my approach to this book: I love Rome. Actually, that is
not quite true because it is a massive understatement. I have some sort of
bizarre connection to the Eternal City that I do not understand, but which
makes me feel as if I have lived there in a previous life. I am at my most
content whenever I am there and I have a passion for all things Italian, modern
and, most especially, ancient. I loved learning Latin when I was at school, so
much so that I spent seven years studying part time to earn a degree in
Classical Studies during my thirties and have even been known to cook authentic
ancient Roman recipes from Apicius. Some of my favorite books are mystery
novels set in Ancient Rome, especially those by Lindsey Davis and Steven
Saylor, and my one great regret about moving to the US is that we can no longer
take our two week vacation in Rome every year. So, as I said earlier: I
LOVE Rome!
I recently read Diana Peterfreund’s
Rampant,
which is also set in Rome; in fact one of the prime reasons why I read it was
because of its setting. I was pleasantly surprised that it did not make any
glaring errors in its depiction of the city, but that was mainly accomplished
by being rather vague in its details. This was not the case with A Season For
The Dead. Mr Hewson has obviously spent a great deal of time in Rome and has
done much more than visit the well-known tourist attractions. He describes many
obscure places that I have also been and conjures the feeling of Rome with
effortless ease, placing us in the terrible, driving heat of mid-summer when
all the sensible Romans escape to the coast or the mountains. He evokes the
feel and the smell of the place so well that I reveled in it, rather than finding
myself waiting for the next blunder or telltale mistake that would reveal his
lack of familiarity with somewhere that I know so well. This was a very, very
pleasant surprise to me and one that I enjoyed immensely, grinning with delight
as he used unusual locations that I recognized. This was a rare experience for
me as I am so used to reading books set in the UK that do not quite ring true.
For this aspect alone I found the book very enjoyable.
However, not everyone will be so enraptured by his depiction
of Rome and its inhabitants, so I will try to set that aside and consider the
book’s other attributes. One major problem that several of the other book group
members found was with the character of Sara Farnese. We begin the book in her
head and it is quickly revealed that she is engaged in an affair with an academic
from the UK. She speculates that he probably has a lover in every major city,
but she has never asked him about any other attachments, such as a wife. I am
normally the first to be disappointed with characters that engage in
infidelity, but I did not find her to be so appalling that I could not continue
with the book. Unfortunately, several of the other members could not get past
this point in the plot and stopped reading. I think that if they had read
further and started to get to know Nic then they would have been carried along
by the story as I was, but I can understand their decision. Sara is probably
the weakest link in the entire book. She is certainly beautiful, intelligent
and desirable, and she is provided with a sufficiently terrible origin story to
explain her tragically warped character, but she still remains unsympathetic,
even once we know all the appalling details. I think that starting the book in
her head was a huge mistake.
Fortunately, Nic and many of the other characters are
interesting and sympathetic enough to draw us into the story. Apart from his
inability to resist Sara’s lure, Nic is an excellent lead character. He is
young and still learning his trade, but is not over-confident and full of
bravado, nor is he exceptionally brilliant or a ‘golden boy who can do no
wrong’. He works hard, makes logical deductions and is heart broken when he is
disillusioned by life’s ugliness. He has an interesting back story and a
penchant for studying the paintings of Caravaggio (one of my favorite artists
to see in Rome). He makes personal mistakes and is suitably human, which I
appreciate in the lead character of a series. We see him develop and change
over the course of the story, especially in regards to the relationship with
his father.
However, it is the lesser characters that really steal the
show. This is especially true for Luca Rossi and his girlfriend, the
pathologist known to everyone as ‘Crazy’ Theresa. Luca is a detective who has
been broken by the job and is simply trying to slog along until he gets his
pension. He looks like a slob and seems to care very little for himself:
drinking and eating badly, smoking and continually crumpled and sweaty. He
looks at Nic and sees the young man he once was, with all his energy and
idealism, and finds the world unutterably depressing. There is a wonderful
revelation about his character near the end of the book that is very touching,
so I will not spoil it, but I will say that I genuinely wanted this man to find
some happiness with Theresa: I think he deserved something good to happen to
him.
Theresa is a character that I can identify with quite readily
because of my training as a biologist. She is quite happy to discuss autopsy
details over dinner, no matter how awfully stomach-churning this might be to
her companions. This reminds me of many happy hours spent discussing parasites
and intestinal infestations with my husband, a former public health laboratory
technician, who can spend hours gleefully recounting the horrendous cases he
encountered and samples that he processed. For some reason, when you become a biologist
you develop a need to discuss the most disgusting topics whilst eating in
company! Theresa is also a person uncomfortable with herself, and her position
as a woman constantly fighting for acceptance in a male-dominated workplace has
made her very abrasive. She is very perceptive and intelligent, with a
wonderful wit, so she has some great lines and I hope that she reappears later
in the series.
Another great addition to the story is Nic’s father, the
dying Communist, Marco. At first, I thought that his addition to the plot was merely
maudlin, but he actually brought a wonderful poignancy that grounded Nic’s
character and allowed for a lot of soul searching. He was a wonderfully witty
character, and the father-son relationship was very well explored, with both of
them learning and growing as they came to terms with the inevitable. Marco also
had the most normal relationship with Sara Farnese of all the ones that we saw,
which did help to humanize her a little.
Interesting characters cannot shine without a good plot and
this one skips along at a good speed. We are given a number of unusual points
of view to reveal the story, and whilst this means that we are shown much more
of the story than we would normally expect in a murder mystery, some people
might find it rather unnerving to be placed in the head of a victim just prior
to their murder. Equally, the corruption of the Vatican officials and the unethical,
even evil, behavior of at least one Cardinal could be a stumbling block to
some. Personally, I did not find it all shocking, not after all the revelations
about the sexual abuse that the Church has tried to conceal. Also, I tend to be
a rather cynical person when it comes to the Catholic Church: I have seen
people dressed in sack-cloth and ashes on pilgrimage to Rome and people climbing
up the stairs to Saint Peter’s Basilica on their knees in penance or supplication.
I have also seen how much of the Basilica’s interior is made of gold and
precious stones.
I guess it goes without saying that I really enjoyed this
title and I will certainly try to find time to read more of the Nic Costa series.
It may be too bloody and controversial for some readers but it transported me
to my beloved Rome and kept me enthralled as the various unpleasant truths were
revealed.
