The new Arnold Clover — and a chance to win an advance copy

A bit of history, a bit of mystery, a lot of the extraordinary city called Venice. That, I guess, is what lies at the heart of all four books I’ve produced featuring Arnold Clover, my retired English archivist who’d love a quiet life reading books and enjoying the city on the lagoon… if only he could get it.

We have ten advance reading ebook copies of The Devil in Dorsoduro to be won. The contest opens now and closes on April 2. It’s open to everyone who subscribes to this website (which is free and we don’t email you often, honestly). To enter just tell us the name of the fellow archivist, a Venetian, who is Arnold’s constant companion in the series. Send your answers to promotion@davidhewson.com. In bocca al lupo!

Whenever I start a new story I ask myself two vital questions: where exactly is it going to take place principally, and at what time of year? Let’s deal with the timing first. The Devil in Dorsoduro runs across a few days in the thirty degree plus heat of mid-August. An unusual time of year. On occasion the place almost feels like a ghost city, deserted by its dwindling native citizens who’ve fled for cooler parts, high in the Dolomites or a secluded beach in Sicily. 

The reason turns up on the fifteenth of the month. Ferragosto. The signal for much of Italy to down tools and head off on holiday. A tradition going back two thousand years to the emperor who gave the annual break its name, one revived by Mussolini keen to keep workers sweet and on his side.

I love Venice in August, though all my friends who live there and have decamped for the hills or elsewhere think I’m mad. Yes it’s hot and sticky, yes a good number of cafes and restaurants will have closed their doors until the end of the month. But go into the quieter, local corners and there’s a peace you’ll only find in January after Epiphany. I’ve wanted to set a story around Ferragosto for ages, and The Devil in Dorsoduro is it. Unlike the previous tale, The Four Deadly Seasons, which took place across an entire year as the title suggests, this is a quick romp over a few days leading up to the fifteenth of the month. 

Now for the location. Almost all of this tale takes part in a part of Dorsoduro where tourists are a distinct rarity: Santa Marta. There’s a reason for that. There’s none of the great beauty of San Marco and the Grand Canal in this quiet corner of the city, south of Piazzale Roma. It’s close to where the cruise ships used to moor, and full of industrial buildings now mostly converted into university quarters.

All the same Santa Marta is one of the oldest parts of the city, which shows in sites such as the ancient churches of San Nicolò dei Mendicoli, San Raffaele Arcangelo and San Sebastiano. But beyond that there’s not a lot except for a smattering of charming little restaurants and a couple of bars, all local. The real-life bar that features most in this story is Al Canton on the Fondamenta de L’ Arzere, where you can while away the hours watching the ducks bicker on the canal while groups of happy students wander by. Oh and lots of noisy ducks.

Here, in a building I invented for the book, Arnold has been doing favours, shopping and dog walking, for a retired English woman, Celia Monteith, of some means. When she’s found dead in odd circumstances he’s drawn into the case because no one can work out who Celia really was. And, to his chagrin, he’s put in charge of Celia’s three-year-old dachshund, the lively and highly intelligent Bruno.

As the mystery around Celia and her odd clique of female friends grows murkier, it’s Bruno who leads Arnold further into its depths, since it turns out he knows Venice well, and all the places Celia used to go. Places that lead Arnold to some strange and perilous revelations…

I’ll be putting up a few more tidbits about the tale in the weeks running up to publication. So if you’re interested do please subscribe — and try your luck at our contest to win an advance reading copy above.

The Devil in Dorsoduro is out on May 7 in ebook and print from Bloodhound and on audio from WF Howes. You can reserve an ebook copy now for just 99p here. And do please bear in mind advance orders really matter these days — they do things to the algorithms online stores use that are apparently very important. So thanks if you go that way.

If you’d like to take a virtual wander around Santa Marta Al Canton is the place to start — imagine you’re enjoying a coffee with Arnold then set off down the canal here. But I tell one whopping great lie in the book. Arnold is a regular visitor to Al Canton throughout — but in reality it’s one of the places that usually shuts up shop for Ferragosto. As I said… it’s local.