Jonathan Holt

It has a bit of an abrupt ending. And the "abomination" is a woman, don't you know.

This book takes place in and around Venice, sometime after the turn of the 21st century.
The protagonist is a female cop, who is subordinate to a male cop, who she has an affair with, though he's married.
They are assigned the case to investigate a body found washed up on the shore of an island that used to House a mental Asylum.
The body is that of a woman, dressed in the clothing of a Catholic priest. This is the abomination.
I was raised up catholic, attending Catholic School from 1st through 5th grade. Then my parents rebelled in their way, attending alternate Catholic churches in storefronts, Then going on to unitarianism, And finally ending up in the liberal Catholic Church, where they allow priests to be married. I really hate the Catholic Church. It's Full of lies and hypocrisies. And the Church is misogynistic:
" 'in a nutshell, the teaching of the Catholic Church, as set out by his holiness, is that the church simply has no authority to confer priestly ordination on women. It goes back to the original curse levied against Eve - in other words, it's a matter of Divine law rather than papal judgment. Hence any woman attempting to receive ordination, or to pass herself off as having been ordained, would be guilty of what his Holiness calls a "grave delict". That is, she would be a kind of heretic.' "
says a priest interviewed by the carbiniere.

Religion had to be dreamed up by a man.

The fisherman in the area where the body was found, bless themselves by touching their testicles (eww) when the Carabiniere, questioning them, show them the picture of the corpse, a woman dressed in a priest's vestments.

The body has some tattoos, symbols that are puzzling Kat, the young woman carabiniere, at first. Then, getting a clue from questioning sex workers, she looks them up on the internet, using the search terms croatian, Catholic and tattoo.
" 'They're called stećak symbols. According to this, Catholics in Bosnia originally tattooed their children with these markings in the hope that the Turks wouldn't take them as slaves - they couldn't be forcibly converted to Islam if they had Christian symbols on their skin. After the fall of the ottomans, the tattoos remained as symbols of the underground Church in croatia.' "

Kat and her Superior, Piolo, are stymied in their efforts to solve the murder by the prosecutor, who is, naturally, corrupt, and does everything he can to deny the fact that the area is controlled by the mafia:
" 'Let me propose an alternative scenario, Marcello said crisply. 'We have two female foreigners, one American and one Croatian, sharing a hotel room in our beautiful city. We have an obscene ceremony and a remote location, decorated with sacrilegious and occult symbols. We have the ultimate desecration of the mass by one of them, wearing a priest's robes. All thoroughly unsavory, but no doubt a thrill to those of a certain disposition - and when we ask what kind of disposition these two women had, we learned that they were the sort of people who pursue elaborate conspiracy theories. We learned that they frequent dubious websites and choose to lurk in dark corners of the internet, where such things grow unfettered. And then we discover, too, that they were seen looking for a prostitute - a very specific prostitute; no doubt one who shares their particular tastes.' "
the prosecutor is determined to link up lesbianism, satanism, and conspiracy theories, in his efforts to deny the work of the local Mafia in the murder.

One thing I really like about this book is the exposure of corruptness that we see in the local police in Venice, and in the character of the retired CIA agent Ian Gilroy, who supposedly is mentoring the new liaison officer on the US army base nearby, Holly, a young woman who shares the role of protagonist in this book, and who ends up being good friends with Kat.
This Spook is willing to sacrifice what he calls his "terrier," as she turns out to be a superb researcher.
Some of the best truths that try to be denied by government show up in literature.

This book has to do with human trafficking of young women from Croatia, and the mafia.
One of the characters is a man called Daniele, who is awaiting sentencing for refusing to allow the government access to his created internet world, a depiction of Venice, down to the last stone and canal.
… (meer)

An Italian police captain investigates a murder which appears to be related to Freemasonry; a US lieutenant investigates the recent suspected poisoning of her intelligence service father; a social media tech giant hunts down a jihadist hacker bent on mass destruction. All of this against the backdrop of Italian conspiracy theory politics and located in Venice and the Veneto.

This is a bonkers thrill ride where everybody believes in or is embroiled in a deep conspiracy about past or present Italian politics and has a secret agenda alongside their day-job commitments. The three story strands come together, overlap and separate again before finally converging for a quite exciting finale. There are both upbeat and downbeat results for all the characters involved.

Although the setting is Venice, I did not get a deep enough feel of the city. Venice should be a character in this book but is mainly sidelined. Frankly, this could have happened pretty much anywhere. On the plus side, I never knew how deeply embedded in Italian society the USA is.

Pretty good, and great recipes!… (meer)

Dan Brown meets Stieg Larsson ... but don't let that put you off!

Sorry about the 'Dan Brown' reference: in fact, this is written by a writer who can write. It's just that conspiracy theories involving the Catholic church sort of invite the comparison. Indeed, Holt doesn't stop at the Catholic church: he throws everything at this. We are treated to corruption at the highest level also in the US military, with a dash of Mafia involvement, too, for good measure.

Big issues are tackled: murder, people trafficking, international relations, war crimes, feminism ...

Meet Katerina Tapo, Venetian carabiniere captain on her first homicide; Holly Boland, US junior military officer on her first overseas posting, returning (with fluent Italian) to the Venice of her childhood; Daniele Barbo, in the Lisbeth Salander role, almost if not quite as disfunctional as Salander, who has recreated an online Venice, useful for various intriguing plotlines. And the novel is made even more real by the existence in the real (virtual) world of the website run by Barbo itself (to be found at www.carnivia.com).

I found this a great read: complex without being over complicated, possible if not probable, likable and (mostly) credible characters doing lots of thrilling and important things. And the goodies win.

Come on, enjoy an exciting romp round Europe!… (meer)