Lucifer's Shadow - David Hewson

A clever novel from Hewson juxtaposes two plots, one based in today’s Venice, the other in 1733. Both are tied together by a musical instrument, and the events which occur to the characters through the intermediary of the Scacchi family, once influential, but now in the wane. Daniel is a young orphan graduate from Oxford who was invited by Scacchi to Venice to catalogue the contents of his ‘library’, while back in the 1700’s Lorenzo is Scacchi’s orphaned nephew who comes to Venice as an apprentice. The plot works. I say plot because in essence the book is the same plot, only told in two slightly different styles, finally coming ...