THE GARDEN OF EVIL
David Hewson
Delacorte Press
Suspense
ISBN: 9780385339575
THE GARDEN OF EVIL opens in a curious way. Aldo Caviglia was a baker at one time, but now he is an "over the hill" pickpocket. On this day he steals the wallet of a well-dressed French woman who asks him for directions. He then kindly volunteers to show her the way. As they walk, he tells her that she will be entering an interesting section of the city, where many famous artists lived. It was once part of the area called Ortaccio, set aside by the Popes for prostitutes.
He is embarrassed about bringing this subject up but can't seem to stop the words that keep coming. "Orto may signify the Garden of Eden. Ortaccio signifies what came after our discovery of sin. The Garden of Humanity. Or the Garden of Wickedness or Evil. Or one and the same." Almost as soon as their encounter begins, it ends, when he leaves the woman at her destination. Caviglia pats his pocket to reassure himself that her wallet is safely hidden there. But he suddenly senses that something is wrong. He has a bad feeling about the whole business but can't put his finger on it and goes on his way.
Later, as he inspects the contents of the wallet, he finds "a small pink plastic box. The front had the universal emblem for medicine…the caduceus. Two serpents writhing round a winged staff." When he lifts the top he finds medication marked with exact times to be taken, clearly a very important part of her treatment. He also spots a small card, which says, in part, that if anyone finds this box of medicine, can they please return it to her as soon as possible, for her life depends upon strictly dosing herself. Caviglia is a good man who has just decided to be a pickpocket instead of working. But in this case he immediately makes up his mind to return the woman's belongings. After all, "he knew where she was."
He may have left her in what was once an artist's colony and/or a brothel, but now he has no idea which of the twisting alleys or ancient buildings she entered. Finally, he asks for help and is directed to a studio that seems to be known to only a few people. He goes in search of the "green door," and after he gains entry he makes his way through the darkness toward a faint light ahead. "The voice --- high, pained, stretched by such agony he could not begin to imagine what caused it --- drifted through the damp, fusty air…pulsing with an exact and heart-rending rhythm…as if she was being tortured. When he burst into the room he was too late…too late for any and everything." The scene before him is impossible to take in.
Caviglia is barely conscious of being told that many famous artists frequented this area; then one of the drinkers informs him that Caravaggio, one of Italy's most celebrated and reviled Renaissance artists, kept a studio there. The canvases Caravaggio had painted were mainly of male nudes, but he also created depictions of life and death in Rome. Then a painting hanging on the wall transfixes Caviglia. When he finally gets his bearings, "his eyes…were fixed, unfailingly, on the painting, unable to look anywhere else. This was in some cryptic, unknowable way, the very scene he's just witnessed" --- a man standing over the destroyed body of a woman, in reality the one he directed to this place of carnage. This person "disentangled himself from [the woman's] torso…the bloody knife…in his hand. There was no point in fleeing the inevitable." Caviglia keeps his eyes on the painting, "marveling at the …care, beauty and exactitude" that proved this the "work of a master."
"The picture possessed a frightful beauty, one that burned so brightly that, once witnessed, it could never be unseen." He also realizes that the enigma at the heart of the painting was either its portrayal of a tortured woman's instant of death, or it captured her in a pose of complete ecstasy. In either event she is dead. She has been violated and butchered, just like the woman slain at this feet, the woman he had met on the bus.
THE GARDEN OF EVIL is one of the best literary police procedurals written this season. Like five of his six previous novels, this one features Hewson's reliable ensemble team: Inspector Leo Falcone, newly promoted Inspector Nic Costa, Gianni Peron, Teresa Lupo and Silvio Di Capua. They and a score of other law enforcement operatives begin a focused, intense investigation to find those responsible for the murders of Caviglia and the woman.
At Falcone's suggestion, Costa meets and begins to work with an art expert who is a lay sister in a convent. Her knowledge and intuition carry them into the world of Caravaggio and his confounding canvas. As events continue to unfold, they deconstruct the complicated strokes that overlay the twisted lines of the artwork; then a pattern, secreted underneath the surface, begins to emerge. Costa and his partner become convinced that the painting holds a 400-year-old secret whose tentacles reach out into the present. And, if they are correct, this hidden message will reveal a conspiracy, played out over four centuries, by a male cult, known as the Ekstasists, whose only purpose has been to maintain their garden of evil. Once on this track, the partners think they know exactly who the killer is and why he has been allowed to "get away with murder" for so long.
The breadth and intense accuracy of David Hewson's research is the palette he uses for the landscape against which THE GARDEN OF EVIL is juxtaposed. With the stroke of his pen, he transports readers to times and places buried in eons of history while seamlessly bringing them back to the present. In each of his books his protagonist, Nic Costa, has slowly shed his picaresque role and is now a man with a real sense of self. No longer the naïve beat cop, he has earned his stripes as a detective, which adds verisimilitude to the way he ferrets out the clues that he needs to solve the murders in this labyrinthine drama.
Fortunately for readers, even though these novels form a series, they do not necessarily have to start with book one. David Hewson is very careful to bring new readers right in to the "family," and they will have no trouble finding their way. Those who are already fans will not want to miss THE GARDEN OF EVIL. And new readers will find themselves enchanted by Hewson's storytelling abilities.
--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum
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