A fascinating search for the ‘lost Lucrezia’
The reader
is taken on an enchanting tour of Venice in this second novel in David Hewson’s
Arnold Clover series. Retired archivist Arnold, who has made his home in a tiny
flat in the beautiful city of canals and calle, is asked by one of his new
friends, Carabinieri officer Valentina Fabbri, to help a fellow Brit, Lizzie Hawker,
whose father has just died.
Through her
mother, a Contessa, who has for a long time been missing presumed dead, Lizzie
has inherited a crumbling palazzo on the Grand Canal, along with a heap of
other problems, and she is finding herself out of her depth in Venice, where
she hasn’t lived since she was a young child.
This novel has a very likeable protagonist in ex pat Arnold
Clover, who in the first novel, The Medici Murders, was called in to help the
Carabinieri with translation when a British visitor was murdered.
Arnold and his wife had planned to live out their
retirement years in Venice and had bought a small apartment there, but on the
eve of their departure from England, Arnold’s wife had died because of a
deteriorating health condition.
With his house sold and nothing left for him in
London, Arnold had to make the move alone, but now, he has settled in, he has
made some some good friends in Venice.
Arnold and Lizzie set out to look for a priceless painting
that is missing from the palazzo, a portrait of the notorious Lucrezia Borgia.
But all they have to go on are some cryptic clues that Lizzie’s mother, Contessa
Lucia Scacchi, has left behind.
Thery are up against the clock because other people
are interested in finding the painting and are pursuing them through the
alleyways. They are being watched by an unscrupulous businessman, and a
freelance journalist looking for an exclusive. The local authority is also keen
to acquire the palazzo for their own use and the police suspect Lizzie’s dead
father of illegally exporting art and threaten to take action against Lizzie
herself if the painting isn’t found.
Arnold and Lizzie’s urgent search takes them into many
quaint corners where they discover the less well-known history of Venice and
Arnold introduces Lizzie to the best of the local food and wine, while finding
himself becoming increasingly attracted to Lizzie herself.
This novel will appeal to readers who enjoy crime
novels set in Venice with a generous sprinkling of Italian history and culture.
Their frantic quest to find the lost Lucrezia has many
twists and turns and the story kept me gripped until the final page.
David Hewson is a former journalist with the Times,
the Sunday Times and the Independent. He has written more than 30 novels,
including a series of crime novels set in Rome. He now lives near Canterbury in
Kent but his deep knowledge of Venice is evident on every page.
Buy The Borgia Portrait by David Hewson
