I had the chance to talk about writing with my old friend Jim Fusilli, celebrated author and onetime rock music critic of the Wall Street Journal, for his podcast Writers at Work.
You can listen to our musings below. It’s well worth browsing Jim’s backlist of previous interviews too. There are some fascinating figures in there, among them the musician Graham Nash. You can find them all here.
Sorry about this morning — the download link for Carpaccio’s Dog didn’t do what I said it would. If you’re already subscribed, here it is directly, no faffing about:
PDF: https://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Carpaccios_Dog.pdf
EPUB + PDF (ZIP): https://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Carpaccios_Dog_ebook.zip
And if you’re new here and haven’t grabbed it yet — subscribing gets it sent straight to you, along with more like it.
I’ve never been terribly interested in flavours of the month. AI being one of them. None of us can avoid AI, of course. If you’ve searched for something on Google you’re using it already.
There are things about it I hate, naturally. The idea of using technology to create actual scenes of a book is simply appalling. Readers have every right to expect the work they’ve paid for was written by the person whose name is on the cover, not an algorithm. It also deprives an author of the real fun of creativity, which is inventing something out of nothing but your imagination and talent.
(more…)
It’s twenty-five years since I first dreamed up a young Roman cop called Nic Costa, along with his crew, Gianni Peroni, Teresa Lupo and Leo Falcone. Over ten books they became a popular series, one that came to a halt as I travelled on to Copenhagen for The Killing trilogy, then four books with Pieter Vos in Amsterdam and later Venice with Arnold Clover and The Garden of Angels.
I knew from my regular mail that, for many readers, Nic Costa never really went away. I deliberately killed no one off in the series. Why close doors? But I’m not the kind of writer who can only write one kind of book with one set of characters, So other places always beckoned.
All the same Nic kept nagging me, and now I’m delighted to tell you he’s making a final return, in three linked books from Joffe, the first of which will appear next April. These are the closing chapters of the story of my idiosyncratic little team from the Rome Centro Storico Questura. After the third book in the trilogy there will be no more.
The linked story that ties together all three titles could not be more topical. Italy is in a state of political chaos. Forces inside and outside the formal corridors of power, a shadowy organisation linking bent politicians, crime lords and figures in the church, are manoeuvring to take over the reins of power and do away with the checks and balances of traditional constitutional government.
Over a few shocking days just before Christmas, Costa and his colleagues find themselves at the heart of proceedings after a controversial politician is kidnapped during the seasonal fair in Piazza Navona. Terrorism…? Or something even more sinister? Costa is determined to find out, and along the way makes a surprising discovery about his own life through a past relationship, a change he never saw coming.
The books will appear in spring next year and then 2028 and 2029. In the meantime if you want to catch up on the original Costa books you can catch up on the originals through a new ebook box set of the first seven titles from Joffe for the special, temporary price of £1.99.
Oh and I know I’m going to get ask this too… where does this leave Arnold Clover in Venice?
Well, Arnold has his own news to announce shortly…