Sat 23 Sep 2017
DAVID HEWSON – The Sacred Cut. Nic Costa #3. Delacorte Press, US, hardcover, December 2005. Macmillan, UK, April 2005.
There are not many types of mysteries that I do not read, but there are a few. I remember once expressing my disinterest in detective stories with horses in them, which at the time caused a mini-uproar among Dick Francis fans, among others. Well, Dick Francis fans need no longer worry. I’ve read a couple of his books, and they were pretty good. Especially the parts that did not have horses in them.
At one time I had no interest at all in historical mysteries. Now I read them all of the time. Except for those that take place in ancient Rome. I think that relates somehow to my distaste for Latin in high school. Ixnay, I say.
I still do not read mysteries in which children are the victims. It’s bad enough to have to read about such incidents in the newspapers almost every day. Mind you that I am not saying that mysteries in which children are the victims should not be written, if they are written with the right motive in mind, but if children are hurt or killed in a work of fiction, it had damn well better be the right motive in mind.
I seldom read books about serial killers, either, which gets us closer (finally) to the book at hand. The determining factor in this sub-genre is how much blood and gore gets splattered around. Generally speaking, my rule of thumb says to assume that when a book is about a serial killer, the author somehow is going to depend on blood and gore to get his (or her) point across, that this is one nasty guy and somehow he has to be caught. Well, sure. And I’ll pass on it and read something else.
And so The Sacred Cut had a couple of strikes against it, even before I began, given the front cover of the Advance Reading Copy:
You recall what I said about ancient Rome? Well, that’s not really the setting here, but in a sense it is. The setting is as contemporary as it can be, given that the various US invasions of Iraq are to blame for the events behind the scene described in the blurb above. But generally speaking, as the blurb suggests, history does play a big part of the story, with the multi-faceted city of Rome being one the most important players.
There is, in fact, a large ensemble cast of players, and as long as the focus stays on police officers Nic Costa and his partner Gianni Peroni; their superior, Inspector Leo Falcone; the female pathologist Teresa Lupo; the female FBI agent-in-training Emily Deacon; and Laila, the youthful (female) waif refugee from Iraq who witnesses the scene in the blurb above, then all is well.
Better than merely “well.†This is as intriguing a police procedural as I’ve read in a long time. (Even if you keep in mind that for some reason, I have not read a police procedural in a long time, this is still a true statement, and I stand behind it with no qualifiers at all. (I almost said with no qualification at all, but I thought better of it.))
I have to tell you, though. After reading page 116, when the killer snaps and his scalpel starts flying and he begins flaying away, along with a handy supply of meat saws and cleavers nearby, I very nearly did not read page 117.
More of the same, I thought, and I have better things to do. My advice to you, however, is the same I gave myself. Keep on reading. You won’t regret it.
The killer is largely known; his motives are not. Either way, he’s far from the most interesting factor of the novel. It’s Falcone’s superiors who are; Emily Deacon’s superior who is; it’s the relationship between Costa and Peroni and Lupo and Deacon and (surprisingly) Laila which is. Humorous when it needs to be, sad when it needs to be, philosophical when it needs to be, and real all of the time, this is a long novel which you will wish was even longer.
What came as a surprise to me, when it was over, as I was happily sitting where I sat, doing my own wishing for more, was the discovery that this is the third in a series of Nic Costro novels, and that the fifth will be published next year. I knew that author David Hewson had written a quite a few other books I’ve seen at Borders, but they all looked like standalones to me. Filled with serial killers and/or grotesque killings.
It looks like I’ll have to go looking for them.
September 23rd, 2017 at 7:58 pm
Here is author David Hewson’s reply, dated January 2006:
Thanks for the interesting and kind review of The Sacred Cut. You’re absolutely right about the one very obvious graphic and violent scene. If the book ever makes it to a movie it will be one of the first things to go. Were I writing the book now, and not in early 2003, it would get cut too.
The thing is… Writers always start series with more blood and swearing than they like, for reasons most of us don’t actually understand. What was worse for me was that the first three books in the Costa series were produced under the continuing shadow of 9/11, the Afghan war then the Iraq war. A pretty violent start to this great century of ours.
Things like that affect me; the same goes for some other writers I know, whose work during that period is more violent than normal. Not many people notice this. A little while back one of our national newspapers here in the UK wrote a piece decrying the level of violence in modern fiction, and citing A Season for the Dead among a list of titles it used to support its thesis.
The piece seemed baffled by how much blood there was in the books that came out between 2002 and 2004. You wonder if the person writing it ever managed to take a look at the news pages. Writers are affected by the state of the world – at least this one is. I doubt many people wrote great fairy stories in Hitler’s Germany.
It’s always nice to read a review by someone who’s actually taken the time to read a book properly. As a former newspaper journalist, I hate to say this but that often isn’t the case with the press. The web is definitely stealing some ground on decent book reviews these days. Thanks again for yours.
If it’s of any interest to readers, you can read a few honest words about the genesis of these books at my website, http://www.davidhewson.com.
September 23rd, 2017 at 10:48 pm
Both the review and author reply bring up some interesting points.
I do not read books with children as victims, but I understand why there seems to be an increase in them. Now that it is common for women to be the main character in violent crime stories it is harder to portray adult women as innocent helpless victims to stir the emotions of the reader. This leaves children as the only possible type character for the innocent helpless victim.
The idea that what is happening in the real world effects the writer is an interesting one I had not considered. Back during the horrors of the early and mid-20th Century entertainment such as movies went into escapism as a reaction, but it was also a time when books turned hardboiled with books such as Red Harvest by Hammett began to rise in reaction to the Philo Vance group.
September 24th, 2017 at 7:56 am
Excellent review Steve, and I think it could spawn an interesting discussion. Mostly I agree with your biases on Mysteries, but I’ve always wanted to set a story in ancient Rome and throw in the line, “Tiberius glanced at his watch.” just to see who noticed.
September 24th, 2017 at 3:53 pm
Things have changed since I wrote this review. I no longer read many historical mysteries. Even though this one proved to be a definite exception, as soon as I see serial killer or gruesome murder on the blurb of the back cover, I put it right back on the shelf.
Hewson is quite right about books being the product of the time period that they are written in, but my reaction as a reader is to find safety from the outside world by devoting my reading time to detective stories and puzzle mysteries, as dull as they may be to most present day readers.
With exceptions, of course, to everything I’ve just said.
September 24th, 2017 at 4:43 pm
Philo Vance appears in The Benson Murder Case (1926) and Red Harvest (1929) just a little later. Three years is not much a separation. They are operating in the same time frame, not in reaction to one another.
September 24th, 2017 at 5:12 pm
In this case, the reaction is true, as Hammett was writing reviews for magazines and/or newspapers at the time, and in one of them he spoke quite badly of Philo Vance.
I wish I could find the review online so I could quote it, but so far I haven’t. The closest discussion I have found so far is from mystery fiction historian Curtis Evans’ blog, where he says:
“Nevertheless, lots of people couldn’t and can’t stand Vance, as the Ogden Nash couplet suggests. One of Dashiell Hammett’s most famous book reviews is devoted to ridiculing the original Philo Vance outing, The Benson Murder Case (1926).”
http://thepassingtramp.blogspot.com/2013/07/philo-vanceneeds-kick-in-pance.html
September 24th, 2017 at 10:22 pm
In comment 2 I used Hammett and Vance as examples of two types of mysteries in the 20s-40s and not as literal comparisons to the two writers. How the mystery genre reflects the times is always fascinating. The hardboiled of Black Mask and the Hammett school was an example of writers and readers dealing with the realities of the times, while the traditional puzzle mysteries of popular writer of the time S.S. Van Dine and others reflected the need of escapism and the belief in order over chaos.
Every era has a dark side. For the 1920s the traditional mystery represent the past while hardboiled mysteries rose in reaction to surviving WWI and the Spanish Flu that killed so many young people that they faced the possibility of death every day.
Today mysteries reflect the madness of the individual on society. War and its logic of nations fighting for a cause is replaced by terror from small groups of unknown threats. No wonder the terror of the serial killer rose as a device in mysteries. It is also interesting to see the growing popularity of the romance suspense become the current version of the cozy – a form with a strict format (comfort in order) and a plot more interested in finding love with humor than dealing with the victim’s death.
September 24th, 2017 at 10:57 pm
Excellent Michael, thank you for the insight.
September 25th, 2017 at 5:50 am
My #1 problem with these books is, they are 500 pages long. I don’t mind historicals, especially books set in modern times with an element of the past in them (such as in Kate Ellis’s Wesley Peterson series). Otherwise, I prefer books set in the 19th & 20th Centuries to those in more “ancient” times, even if said times are the (say) 10th-13th Centuries rather than Ancient Rome.
But, we are each entitled to read what we like, right?
September 25th, 2017 at 11:13 am
8. Barry, thank you for the kind words.
9. Jeff, as for your last sentence…so true, except we are on the internet so I understand the sarcasm 🙂 .
September 25th, 2017 at 7:42 pm
The series killer was popular in the twenties and the thirties, and raises his head in the forties through the sixties. What happened with the serial killer was in part the fame of John Douglas, and the UNSUB unit, a series of headline grabbing cases from the Boston Strangler to the Green River killer and numerous non-fiction bestsellers about them.
It was inevitable fiction, notably Thomas Harris, would find the trope irresistible, and the darker times reflected.