The Birthright books are very, very similar in tone and flow into each other plot-wise, so it’s easiest to review them together as a group, but I’ll break down the exact plot in each for posterity’s sake. The series is composed of: 1. All These Things I’ve Done — Anya Balanchine is a teenager who happens to also be the eldest daughter of a deceased crime boss, though the family still operates under the guidance of her uncle. Their trade is chocolate, because in near […]
Abductions, Dionysian Orgies and Mummified Corpses Oh My!
We’re back in Rome, where Detective Nic Costa gets drawn into the case of a missing 16-year-old American girl whose mother insists she was abducted by a mysterious man on a motorcycle in front of a bunch of disinterested Carabinieri. While few at police headquarters take the mother seriously—the girl’s been gone less than a day, after all—Nic suspects that something more is going on. For one thing, the girl is the spitting image of a girl abducted 16 years earlier, whose mummified corpse […]
Like The Da Vinci Code, only better
Another Nic Costa crime thriller set in Rome, which reads less like a movie script and more like a subtler and fully-fleshed version of The Da Vinci Code. Young cop Nic Costa has recently been partnered with burned-out detective Luca Rossi and is sitting outside St. Marks Square trying to figure out how to survive the intense summer heat and humidity when reports of a shooting in the Vatican galvanizes the bored Costa into action. Despite strict instructions to steer clear of Vatican affairs, […]