Nic Costa Books

In a hushed Vatican Reading Room, the scene is shocking: a crazed professor shot dead after brandishing evidence of a grisly crime. Moments later, two bodies are found in a nearby church, each with a gruesome calling card from their killer . Detective Nic Costa is one of the first on the scene. A cop who barely looks his twenty-seven years, Nic soon meets a woman who will dominate both his thoughts—and his investigation. A cool, beautiful professor of early Christianity, Sara Farnese was in the Vatican Library on that fateful day, a witness to her colleague’s outburst and grotesque death. And as more bodies are found, her role becomes even more baffling…because each victim had intimately known Sara, a woman whose history becomes more lurid and unfathomable with each revelation. Until the case takes a sudden, strange turn—and the secrets of a woman, a killer, and a city begin to unravel…with devastating consequences….

When a young woman turns up dead in a peat bog near the banks of the River Tiber, Teresa, a maverick pathologist, thinks she’s got the victim of an ancient Roman ritual on her hands. She’s wrong. Leo Falcone, the chief inspector, knows this case is recent history and the horror is still very much alive. So begins an investigation that will take the police deep into the dark underworld of modern day Rome’s most disturbing and sinister secrets. Nic Costa is trying to stay off the drink. Gianni Peroni used to work vice until he was caught in one of his own department’s stings. Emilio Neri, the local mafia boss, can’t trust his own son and Vergil Wallis, the American mobster, is refusing to talk. Meanwhile, someone is trying very hard to kill the pathologist. And now another beautiful young woman has gone missing …

The snow is falling on the ancient streets of Rome. And in the heart of the city, under the Pantheon’s great dome, a woman’s body lies on the marble floor, carefully positioned with a gruesome carving on her back....In David Hewson’s ingenious new thriller, this horrific murder hurtles Rome’s police force into a collision with U.S. agents–and a secret that has festered for fifteen years, now unraveling in the world’s most enigmatic city. When Detective Nic Costa arrives at the scene, he is unprepared for what he finds, or for the ambush that leaves his only witness vanished into the night. The dead woman was American. Within hours, U.S. agents descend with a take-no-prisoners style and a shocking story to tell: the killer has struck before, in monuments all over the world, leaving the same cryptic message carved onto the bodies of the victims. But one agent, beautiful, blond Emily Deacon, has yet another story to tell Nic–about a stunning act of deception that may lead back to the U.S. government, and her own chilling, personal connection to the killer. Now, as the first murder leads to more grisly slayings and a motley crew of veteran Roman cops jousts with the Americans, Nic is pulled into a woman’s harrowing search for the truth…a search that will take them both into the mind of a madman, into a shocking conspiracy–and into a dark episode in a nation’s long-forgotten past. From its haunting opening to its nerve-shattering climax, The Sacred Cut defies all our expectations, proving once again the unique and compelling genius of David Hewson. From the Hardcover edition.

On an August night on a small island near Venice, a fire explodes in a glassmaking shop. When help arrives, two people are dead, a rich Englishman is implicated, and investigators from Rome are assigned a case no one wants them to solve....In this spellbinding new novel featuring Detective Nic Costa, author David Hewson weaves together the rich fabric of Europe’s most beguiling city with a riveting tale of passion, corruption, and the poisonous bite of betrayal. On their private island, the Arcangelo family defy the world: living in a decaying palazzo, making glass in a terrifying, archaic furnace, watching their absurd exhibition hall sink into disrepair. But now the world is coming to their dying outpost in a crumbling corner of a Venice that tourists never see. Police boats and vaporetti bring investigators, curiosity seekers, and one man who plans to own the property himself. With two family members consumed by the foundry fire, both mystery and opportunity have been bared to the bone. On special assignment from Rome, Detective Nic Costa, along with his partner, his boss, and a dogged pathologist named Teresa Lupo, is getting in the way of progress, Venetian-style. They know that Uriel Arcangelo and his wife were murdered. They know that a predatory Englishman must be a suspect, as is the family of the murdered woman. And while everyone wants the Roman cops to give up and go home, they can’t–because a matter of desire, death, and lies has just turned murderously on one of them.... A tale as bewitching as its lush backdrop, The Lizard’s Bite is an astounding alchemy of superb writing, vibrant atmosphere, and sheer, gripping suspense. From the Hardcover edition.

In the heat of a Rome summer, a seven-year-old boy vanishes in the dank catacombs beneath the city. Now fourteen years have passed, and in acclaimed author David Hewson’s stunning new crime novel the heart-wrenching case has come back to life as Detective Nic Costa and his fellow investigators search through layers of their city’s history–for a killer leaving a trail of bodies, lust, and revenge. 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?

The picture possessed a frightful beauty, one which burned so brightly that once witnessed, could never be unseen...No one could take their eyes off the painting. Even the presence of two corpses, one clearly murdered, the other dead in strange and suspicious circumstances, did nothing to distract their attention from the canvas at that moment... In a hidden studio in Ortaccio, an area of Rome where the Vatican liked to keep an eye on the city's prostitutes, a young and attractive art expert from the Louvre is found dead in front of one of the most beautiful paintings that Nic Costa has ever seen - an unknown Caravaggio masterpiece. But before long tragedy will strike Nick far closer to home. The main suspect's identity is known, but he remains untouchable - protected in his grand palazzo by a fleet of lawyers and a sinister cult known as the Ekstasists. If Costa and his team can crack the reasons for the cult's existence, he may well stand a chance of nailing the double-killer. But the mystery will take him right back to Caravaggio himself and the reasons he had to flee Rome all those centuries before...

On a warm, golden evening in Rome, celebrities and paparazzi gather at the Villa Borghese as a legendary director premieres his long-anticipated film version of Dante’s Inferno. But minutes later the scene is chaos: A man lies dead, the film’s star is missing, and a priceless relic has vanished. As the premiere shifts locations—from Rome to San Francisco—detective Nic Costa finds himself on U.S. shores for the first time, charged with protecting a trove of rare Italian artworks and artifacts, as well as an American film actress, Maggie Flavier. When a killer indeed strikes, and with Flavier in danger, Costa races to unravel the chilling clues that connect Dante’s nine circles of Hell to the shattering revelations of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. But he may be too late. For a cunning plot is closing in around Costa, guided by a poet’s ancient vision of sin and punishment and a killer’s genius for terror. Previously published as Dante's Numbers.

Twenty years ago, a mysterious group called the Butteri committed a series of bizarre crimes evoking the lost race of the Etruscans, and leaving in their wake a several bodies, a cryptic message, and a kidnapped child. Now, the leaders of the G8 are descending on Rome for a summit at the Quirinale Palace. But when a politician is found ritually murdered, seemingly by a strange young man dressed as the Etruscan blue demon, detective Nic Costa suspects that the old case was never really solved. The Butteri have returned – and are planning to unleash a devastating sequence of attacks on the city. Officially sidelined from the investigation but encouraged by the wily old Italian President, Dario Sordi, Costa and his team start to dig deeper into the past. There are still too many questions left unanswered – and much more to the history of the Butteri than anyone wants to admit...

Acclaimed author David Hewson returns with this mesmerizing new thriller featuring Nic Costa and the detectives of Rome’s Questura. This time Costa must solve a case with roots buried deep in one of the ancient city’s most infamous episodes—a story of incest, murder, and martyrdom. It’s August in Rome, and Nic Costa’s vacation is about to be cut short by a scream, a girl covered in blood, and a man lying dead in the Via Beatrice Cenci. It seems that Malise Gabriel, a scholar with an impressive list of enemies, stepped onto faulty scaffolding for a cigarette and fell to his death. On the surface, it’s no more than an unfortunate accident. But the deeper Costa looks—into the facts that don’t add up, into the haunted eyes of Gabriel’s beautiful daughter, Mina, and into the mysterious links between the present and the past—the more he’s haunted by disturbing parallels with a centuries-old crime: In 1599, Beatrice Cenci was beheaded by the Vatican for murdering her father, a man known for unthinkable sexual crimes. Does Mina’s obsession with Beatrice intimate her own family’s dark secrets, or is someone using her as a smoke screen for a far deadlier plan? Soon another body is discovered and Nic comes to doubt his own first impressions. Something evil is circling Mina, her angry and silent mother, her runaway brother, and her family’s checkered history in England, the United States, and Italy. And now that something is closing in fast for the kill. In a novel that captures modern Rome in all its complexity, as well as its history of beauty and barbarity, genius and blindness, The Fallen Angel is David Hewson at his best—a twisting and twisted contest between innocence and evil.

Detective Nic Costa finds himself a stranger in a strange land when he’s sent to infiltrate the mob in a remote part of southern Italy. Roman police detective Nic Costa has been sent undercover to Italy’s beautiful, remote Calabrian coast to bring in the head of the feared mob, the ‘Ndrangheta, who has offered to turn state witness for reasons of his own. Hoping to reel in the biggest prize the state police have seen in years, the infamous Butcher of Palermo, Costa and his team are aware the stakes are high. But the constant deception is taking its toll. Out of their depth in a lawless part of Italy where they are the outcasts, not the men in the hills, with their shotguns and rough justice, the detectives find themselves pitched as much against one another as the mob. As the tension rises, it’s clear the operation is not going to plan. Is Nic Costa getting too close to the enemy for comfort – and is there a traitor among them …?