Dante's Numbers
It was to have been the triumphant swan song for a revered Italian film director—the premiere in Rome of his long-awaited movie version of Dante’s Inferno. But before the lights go down, chaos reigns: a man is dead, the film’s star has disappeared, and a priceless relic, Dante’s death mask, has been stolen. The trail leads to San Francisco, where Rome police detective Nic Costa, along with partner Gianni Peroni and their boss, Leo Falcone, are part of a team charged with ensuring the safety of other relics that will be part of an exhibit at Golden Gate Park set to open in tandem with the rescheduled premiere. But, of course, Hewson’s three maverick detectives want to get involved in the murder investigation itself, technically the province of their institutional rivals, the Carabiniere, and soon enough they are end-running around not only their Italian counterparts but also the San Francisco police. Hewson is a master at convoluted, many-tentacled plots that weave their way through history and back to the present, but this time he doubles the stakes: we start with Dante and the iconography of his Inferno and wind up reliving the plot of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. That’s a lot ground to cover in one novel—perhaps too much—but from scene to scene, Hewson never loses the reader’s attention, and for fans of this outstanding series, the latest chapter in the interlocked lives of Costa and friends, while overstuffed, is as delicious as ever. --Bill Ott