Venice 1733: the young Lorenzo Scacchi has just arrived in the city to work for his uncle at the renowned printing press of Ca' Scacchi. Awed by Venice's splendour, Lorenzo discovers a world of possibilities he has never before dreamed of. But he finds a darker side too. Ordered by his uncle to chaperone a beautiful and gifted violinist who cannot openly reveal her identity, Lorenzo is drawn into a dangerous game of deception, with horrifying consequences.
More than 250 years later, Daniel Forster, a young Englishman, arrives in Venice for a summer job and is immediately seduced by the city's beauty and exoticism. Cataloguing a library in the Ca' Scacchi, Daniel discovers the lost manuscript of an anonymous eighteenth-century concerto. Soon he has become involved in an elaborate scam, leading to a vertiginous spiral of criminal conspiracy and erotic pursuit, with its roots in the political minefield of Vivaldi's Venice.
David Hewson brilliantly interweaves two stories of intrigue and corruption, set centuries apart, and eventuality draws them together in a stunning double-twist ending that will leave the reader gasping for breath. Complex, beautiful, suspenseful, 'Lucifer's Shadow' is Hewson's most tantalising and rewarding novel yet.
