David Hewson: The Seventh Sacrament (USA 2008)

From the Publisher:
In the heat of a Rome summer, a seven-year-old boy vanishes in the dank catacombs beneath the city. Now fourteen years have passed, and in acclaimed author David Hewson's stunning new crime novel the heart-wrenching case has come back to life as Detective Nic Costa and his fellow investigators search through layers of their city's history -- for a killer leaving a trail of bodies, lust, and revenge.

When young Alessio Bramante vanished, there was plenty of blame to go around. His father, a charismatic professor of archaeology, inexplicably left Alessio alone near a labyrinth of ancient tunnels and excavations. Six of the professor's university students, fueled by booze and bravado, involved the boy in their own bizarre ritual at an altar of the ancient warrior god Mithras. And then there were the police: a commanding officer left Giorgio Bramante alone with the prime suspect, allowing Alessio's father to beat the man to death.

After years in prison, Giorgio has been set free and, one by one, those connected to the boy's disappearance are dying. As Costa and his fellow detectives scramble to find Giorgio, they are thrust into a darkening web of hidden perversions and secret passions past and present. Because at the heart of this case -- as close and as far away as Rome's underground treasures -- is the unanswered question: what really happened to little Alessio Bramante fourteen years ago -- and why was his body never found?

David Hewson: The Seventh Sacrament. A Novel of Suspense. Dell, ISBN: 9780440242994 (June, 2008), 592 p., $6.99.

David Hewson: The Seventh Sacrament (UK 2007)

From the Publisher:
'There's an entire underground city down there... houses and temples, entire streets. I talked to a couple of the cavers Leo called in. They hero-worshipped Giorgio. The man had been to places the rest of them could only dream about.'

Giorgio Bramante, a Roman archaeology professor, was master of the hidden world beneath the earth until the day he lost his young son, Alessio, to a group of students intent on re-creating a centuries-old ritual to a long-banished god. His rage knew no bounds and, in a frenzy, he beat one of the students to death.Released from prison fourteen years later, Giorgio is bent upon a terrifying revenge on all those he blames for the loss of his son. Inspector Leo Falcone, a member of the original investigating team, is one of his targets. And Nic Costa, watching Falcone move relentlessly into the man's merciless grip, realizes the answer must lie in solving a cold case that, like the forgotten Alessio Bramante, has long been regarded as dead and buried for good.

David Hewson: The Seventh Sacrament. Macmillan, ISBN: 9780330435956 (October, 2007), 529 p., £6.99.

David Hewson: The Seventh Sacrament (USA 2007)

From the Publisher:
In the heat of a Rome summer, a seven-year-old boy vanishes in the dank catacombs beneath the city. Now fourteen years have passed, and in acclaimed author David Hewson's stunning new crime novel the heart-wrenching case has come back to life as Detective Nic Costa and his fellow investigators search through layers of their city's history -- for a killer leaving a trail of bodies, lust, and revenge.

When young Alessio Bramante vanished, there was plenty of blame to go around. His father, a charismatic professor of archaeology, inexplicably left Alessio alone near a labyrinth of ancient tunnels and excavations. Six of the professor's university students, fueled by booze and bravado, involved the boy in their own bizarre ritual at an altar of the ancient warrior god Mithras. And then there were the police: a commanding officer left Giorgio Bramante alone with the prime suspect, allowing Alessio's father to beat the man to death.

After years in prison, Giorgio has been set free and, one by one, those connected to the boy's disappearance are dying. As Costa and his fellow detectives scramble to find Giorgio, they are thrust into a darkening web of hidden perversions and secret passions past and present. Because at the heart of this case -- as close and as far away as Rome's underground treasures -- is the unanswered question: what really happened to little Alessio Bramante fourteen years ago -- and why was his body never found?

David Hewson: The Seventh Sacrament. A Novel of Suspense. Delacorte Press, ISBN: 0385339569 (July, 2007), 397 p., $22.00.

David Hewson: The Seventh Sacrament (UK 2007)

From the Publisher:
The fifth novel in Hewson's atmospherically beguiling series
Back in Rome after their dramatic adventures in Venice, Costa, Peroni and Leo Falcone are rebuilding their lives. But they team up once again when faced with the sudden appearance of fresh bloodstains on a missing young boy's T-shirt in a small museum exhibit displaying supposed evidence of communication from souls in Purgatory.

Soon they find themselves embroiled in a mystery involving both the ancient cult of Mithras and a sinister ossuary, the House of Bones...

David Hewson: The Seventh Sacrament. Macmillan, ISBN: 1405050225 (January, 2007), 360 p., £12.99.