The Seventh Sacrament (Nic Costa #5)

The intricate fifth thriller from British author Hewson to feature Roman detective Nic Costa (after 2006's The Lizard's Bite) artfully weaves several points-of-view as it shifts between past and present. Fourteen years after seven-year-old Alessio Bramante, the son of an eminent archeology professor, disappeared underneath Rome's ancient Circus Maximus, someone seeking revenge attacks Costa's colleague, Insp. Leo Falcone, who worked on the unsolved case of the missing boy

The intricate fifth thriller from British author Hewson to feature Roman detective Nic Costa (after 2006's The Lizard's Bite) artfully weaves several points-of-view as it shifts between past and present. Fourteen years after seven-year-old Alessio Bramante, the son of an eminent archeology professor, disappeared underneath Rome's ancient Circus Maximus, someone seeking revenge attacks Costa's colleague, Insp. Leo Falcone, who worked on the unsolved case of the missing boy. Falcone and Costa start asking questions that should have been asked during the original bungled investigation. High on their list of people to talk to is Alessio's father, Giorgio, an expert on the tunnels beneath Rome who served time in prison for beating to death one of his students, the chief suspect in his son's disappearance. The subterranean labyrinths just may hold the answers to a mystery whose poignant resolution few readers will anticipate. (July 31)
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Starred Review Hewson's uncompromising trio of antiestablishment Roman cops—Nic Costa, Gianni Peroni, and their boss, Leo Falcone—are back in the Eternal City and up to their necks in another vat of hot water. As with the previous four entries in this always-captivating series, the crime on the front burner—a dead body discovered in a Roman church—is merely the entrée point to a case with tentacles extending deep into ancient history and, in this instance, reaching below the city into the labyrinthian catacombs where a seven-year-old boy, the son of a distinguished archaeologist, disappeared 14 years earlier. Falcone was on that case and still broods over both his failure to find the missing boy and his role in putting the archaeologist behind bars for the murder of one of the young men assumed (but never convicted) of being responsible for the boy's disappearance. The archaeolgist is out of jail now and intent on settling scores. As the story weaves across multiple time lines—the present, the weeks surrounding the boy's disappearance, and the fourth century CE, when Constantine won control of the Roman Empire—Hewson keeps his readers securely tethered to a narrative lifeline; like Theseus on the trail of the minotaur, we follow the plot around countless blind corners but never lose our way out of the maze. Also helping to ground us is the flesh-and-blood humanity of the present-day characters. The interplay between Hewson's three cops—and between them and the especially rich supporting cast—lift this novel far above the plot-driven Da Vinci Code and its many imitators. A superb mix of history, mystery, and humanity. Ott, Bill