The Abomination: A Novel (Carnivia Trilogy, The)
*Starred Review* This remarkable debut novel starts off like a lot of Venetian crime novels—body discovered in a canal, acqua alta getting everyone’s feet wet—but we quickly sense this is no ordinary mystery. The body is a woman dressed like a priest—an abomination for many—and the crime quickly leads Carabinieri captain Kat Tapo into much deeper and more treacherous waters than even a Venetian is accustomed to. When another murder victim is discovered, a connection develops between Kat’s case and an investigation being conducted by an American army lieutenant, Holly Boland, who is on the trail of classified documents that could reveal CIA involvement in inciting civil war in the Balkans. Throw in a computer wizard who has created a virtual Venice, ­Carnivia.com, which has become a repository for every sort of secret—sexual, political, ­religious—and you have a multistranded conspiracy thriller with plenty of pop. Think Dan Brown without the clunky prose and the pompous PhD hero but with the fascinating mix of history, paranoia, and real-live terror (drones on your tail). Holt, an advertising director in London, expertly juggles the high-concept elements of his plot with the subtle character building that quickly establishes Kat and Holly as the kind of protagonists we will follow eagerly through the projected trilogy. Only one book in, many readers will find themselves asking, Why stop at three? --Bill Ott