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. Crossing centuries, encompassing music, passion and murder, Lucifer’s Shadow gained the ‘highest possible recommendation’ from Bookreporter.com and was hailed as ‘one of the best of 2004′ by Deadly Pleasures. Unavailable in the UK for several years, it is now available in a revised edition from Pan Macmillan as The Cemetery of Secrets. The fourth Nic Costa book, The Lizard’s Bite, is a companion piece to this book, featuring some of the same characters.

From the moment he arrives in Venice, Daniel Forster is seduced by the city’s mystery. 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. Sweeping the reader 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, the story builds to a shattering crescendo-and one last, breathtaking surprise.

…a reassuring sense of solid research underlying the descriptions of Venice, past and present. Hewson handles the two storylines of this brisk, intelligent thriller with aplomb, using each to counterpoint the other in a way that is entirely appropriate to a plot that has so much to do with music. Con brio, one might say. The Spectator

Richly enjoyable, sophisticated and beguiling entertainment. Sunday Times

Venice is painted beautifully, both then and now, and this would be a splendid book to read after you have taken the evening air in the Piazza San Marco, or when gliding down the Grand Canal. The Times

This intelligent and highly detailed thriller by British author Hewson (A Season for the Dead, 2003) rivals Perez-Reverte’s The Flanders Panel (1994) in historical intricacy, complexity of motive, and multileveled storytelling. Booklist