SACRED CUT

Roman detectives and the FBI clash in the hunt for a sadistic serial killer.

An Iraqi girl named Laila, escaping her war-torn country, hides on the streets of modern Rome. Late on a snowy night, Rome’s first in decades, she witnesses a murder in the Pantheon. Enter Rome’s toughest team of detectives, led by veterans Nic Costa and Gianni Peroni (The Villa of Mysteries, 2005). The murder victim is found nude, carvings on the flesh depicting a mystical symbol and posed to suggest Leonardo da Vinci’s Vetruvian Man. Childless pathologist Teresa Lupo takes Laila under her wing and the investigation begins, rudely interrupted by the arrival of abrasive FBI agent Joel Leapman and his sidekick Emily Deacon, who instantly stake their claim on the case. The killer, who goes by the name of Kaspar, has racked up a slew of victims around the world. His baroque m.o., which betrays a need to flaunt his brilliance (if not a puzzle out of The Da Vinci Code), kicks off a cat-and-mouse game. Kaspar claims more Roman victims, and Peroni and Leapman nearly come to blows before the clever climax. The solution involves a cache of buried secrets, some stretching back to the first Gulf War.

Hewson’s literate prose, bolstered by local color and historical tidbits, makes for top-flight entertainment.