The Garden of Evil
*Starred Review* Hewson’s latest Nic Costa thriller opens with a shocker that will have series fans reeling, just as it does the principal players: Rome police detectives Costa and Gianni Peroni and their boss, the brooding Leo Falcone. What follows is another gritty, compelling mix of mean streets and ancient history, as the detectives attempt to unravel an appalling series of murders that seems to connect to an unknown Caravaggio painting depicting a tableau of startling depravity. With the help of lay sister and Caravaggio expert Agata Graziano, the detectives quickly determine that a group of wealthy Roman aristocrats, impervious to the law, are re-creating the violent, orgiastic lifestyle enjoyed centuries earlier by Caravaggio and his circle, who called themselves the “Ekstasists”—and if a few prostitutes die in support of the hedonists’ revels, what of it? As usual, Hewson mixes art history and contemporary crime perfectly, but this time he digs deeper, finding connections between art and life that go to the very heart of humanity’s conflicted cravings for the sensual and the spiritual. And emerging from the complex, masterful plot, its sinews intertwined between past and present, is the towering, tragic figure of Caravaggio, whose still-unsolved murder in Rome in 1606 holds the key to bringing the modern-day Ekstasists to justice. Arturo Pérez-Reverte has long set the gold standard for mixing history, mystery, and modern life into literary stews of mouthwatering flavor and incredible subtlety, but it’s time to agree that Hewson now shares that position—and is on the verge of claiming it outright. --Bill Ott