Carnival for the Dead

David Hewson's Nic Costa novels of Rome feature strong plots and strong characters. Among the strongest of the secondary characters is police pathologist Teresa Lupo. However, when she goes to Venice during Carnival to search for her beloved aunt, who is missing, she may be at her most vulnerable because she is out of her element.

Teresa's Aunt Sofia has always lived as a vagabond. Even Teresa's mother doesn't know the kind of details that families usually know that prove helpful in, say, missing persons reports. When Teresa contacts the police, she is met with little sympathy. Her aunt is a grown woman with no diminished capacity and it's Carnival. The police have a lot of other things going on.

Staying at her aunt's flat, Teresa mets the neighbors, a young woman who makes masks for the other main occupant, an older man confined to a wheelchair. The owner is rarely there. The neighbors, although nice, especially for Venetians to Teresa's Roman mind, know little that is helpful. When Teresa finds an envelope slipped under the apartment door with a story, she learns that this and subsequently delivered stories are supposed to lead her to Sofia.

Hewson is a master at weaving these stories, which feature Teresa and other people she meets, with the real story of her search for Sofia. The stories include a British professor and a young Englishman who is a master baker, who both end up in Venice, and a woman who resembles Sofia's neighbor Camille, but with an odd need for nutrients in other people's blood. Carnival season and the narrow, twisty streets of Venice add layers of mystery to the novel; this is not the Venice of a traveller's delight, but rather a dark place where people's obsessions become overpowering.

The stories also feature the enigmatic Count St. Germain, who is based loosely on a real person who was as mysterious as the one in Hewson's story. Readers who know of a St. Germain through Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's groundbreaking series of historical paranormals or in Diana Gabaldon's stories will recognize this figure, even though he is not the same character.

When the stories Teresa has been receiving and her investigation merge into one storyline, there is the usual over-the-top action seen in most thrillers. But Hewson does make everything fit together without jamming it into place. And there is sweetness along with the bitter in the telling.

The main result of reading the novel, however, is to want to spend more time with Hewson's Nic Costa series and see Teresa Lupo back where she belongs. ( )

"Carnival for the Dead" by David Hewson was a major disappointment. I've read two of his other books in the Nic Costa series, one I liked a great deal, the other so-so. But it will be a long time before I read a fourth. The major attraction for me was Venice, where the story takes place, and this alone merits the 2 stars. Lots of detailed descriptions of the city, major landmarks, back alleys, Carnival, vaporetto (water taxis), a good bit of art history, and of course, the citizenry "I'm not Italian, I'm Venetian". But that's it. The mystery in this story is very lame, it's resolution incredibly boring. The story hinges on Arnaud aka The Count of Saint-Germain, born 400-500 years ago who somehow still survives, offering heroine Teresa advice on the case and on life, and at the conclusion explains in a 20 page closing dialog what the case was all about, tidying up all the loose ends. Teresa is a forensic pathologist working with Nic and team in Rome; she has come to Venice to find her missing aunt. The chapters are interlaced with short stories from a mysterious source, but they are even more dull than the investigation. Wish I had quit this book back at pages 50-100 when it became obvious this wasn't for me. ( )

In Carnival for the Dead, by David Hewson, Roman forensic pathologist Teresa Lupo travels to Venice to try to find out what has happened to her bohemian aunt, Sofia, who has mysteriously vanished. Almost as soon as she arrives at Sofia's apartment, she starts to receive strange communications, in the form of short stories that feature both Sofia and herself, along with a number of the people she encounters in Venice. The stories are cryptic and the author unknown, but Teresa is sure that they somehow hold the key to Sofia's whereabouts. Now if only she can figure out the clues before too many bodies start piling up.... This is a sort of side entry in Hewson's Nic Costa series in that Teresa is a secondary character in those books, but although referred to in this story none of the main characters in that series put in an appearance here. The Venice of this story is quite unsettling too, somewhat murky and menacing, an interesting contrast to the city as it is portrayed, say, in Donna Leon's series; for me, this added to the semi-dreaminess of the tale (especially in the short stories that Teresa receives) as well as to the sense of lurking menace. The mystery is fairly clued, but up to the very end I had no idea who was behind the stories or the events taking place in Teresa's "real" world, which for me is always a sign of an excellent mystery. You don't need to have read the Nic Costa series to appreciate this novel, although they are a lot of fun on their own. Recommended. ( )