- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Prime Crime (TRD) (May 2 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0425209814
- ISBN-13: 978-0425209813
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15.2 x 3.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 454 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,156,543 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Set in Venice in 1908, Jakeman's second novel to feature Claude Monet (after 2005's In the Kingdom of Mists) offers a complex and shadowy plot in the tradition of Daphne du Maurier's Don't Look Now. Revel Callender, an English attorney taking a year off before settling down in his profession, is hired by Count Roberto Casimiri to look through the papers of a recently deceased relative born into a wealthy Anglo-Irish banking family. Soon after the count dies under bizarre circumstances, Callender travels to Paris at Monet's request to monitor the investigation of the murder of the painter's brother-in-law, which occurred several months earlier. Callender finds unusual parallels between the two killings and a 16th-century Italian scandal. With impeccable pacing and prose, Jakeman sweeps the reader into the conflict between the decadent world of the old Venetian aristocracy and the new age of a unified Italy rebuilt with American money, though be prepared for unlikable characters, incest and torture. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
In the Venice of 1908, nobility live in crumbling palazzi, and expatriates sample Italian culture. Revel Callendar, a British lawyer taking a year off from his practice, is studying Italian, taking in the galleries, and even considering a stab at painting. When he meets Claude Monet, who is in Venice to escape the scandal surrounding his brother-in-law's murder, the artist asks him to investigate the crime. In addition, the British consul has asked Callendar to sort out the family papers of an elderly woman who has married into the sinister Casimiri family. Both of these cases will take him into a web of murder, corruption, and sexual depravity that is far from the beautiful art inspired by the light of Venice. Throughout, Callendar finds himself drawn to the lovely Clara Casimiri. Jakeman nails the atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Venice well, and she tells a complex tale based on historical fact. A must for historical-mystery readers. Barbara Bibel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
intriguing look at Venice circa 1908, May 3 2006
By Harriet Klausner - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: In The City Of Dark Waters (Hardcover)
In the first decade of the twentieth century in Venice, British Consul Theseus Barton provides fellow Oxford graduate lawyer Revel Callender with assignments that enables the English expatriate to live reasonably albeit somewhat shabbily in the city. Theseus sends Revel to the home of Palazzo Casimiri, part of an affluent English banking family, whose elderly principessa needs legal assistance with documents. Upon arrival at the Casimiri residence, Revel finds a corpse of his client awaits him.
Still hired to organize her papers, Callender finds the swinging body of Count Casimiri hanging from a tree. He sees knife wounds all over the corpse, but the police, heeding the warning advice of a powerful patrician, insist suicide occurred. Artist Claude Monet and his wife arrive having fled Paris after the scandal of the homicide of his brother-in-law. He wants Callender to go to France to investigate the murder though both the artist and the attorney know he can do nothing but report his findings to him. In Venice, while pondering Monet's request, and ignoring the police, attempts on his life, and falling in love with Clara Casimiri, Callender continues to investigate because he knows a murder occurred.
Jane Jakeman provides an intriguing look at Venice circa 1908 using an amateur sleuth whodunit to paint a picture of a morally corrupt society in which injustice is the norm. Callender is a fine protagonist whose need to learn the truth almost becomes a fixation; so much so that the self-exiled Monet knows he is the man to send to Paris on his case. The use of Monet adds to the overall feel that the reader is visiting the era, but in the end it is the exhilarating thriller elements as seemingly folks from different walks of life want Callender stopped that keep the audience reading.
Harriet Klausner
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