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! ( )

Set in Modern Venice this is a wonderfully suspense novel. Involving World dominance, Computer gaming, murder,romance and two strong women all provide a novel that keeps you up nights. Kat Tapo is a Venice policewomen and her friend US Army Lt. seek to bring down a group trying to rule the world. Using a virtual world Carnivia built by Daniele Barbo, himself a victim of this group, the three must find the answers before Venice becomes a ball of fire.
Great read. ( )

He nodded thoughtfully. "It's a rather brilliant system, actually. Someone noticed that terrorist activity in Europe actually decreased after Snowden revealed the extent of our spying activities. At first we thought the bad guys had just learnt how to evade our scrutiny. But then we realised: knowing you're being watched actually makes you behave better in the first place. It was a philosopher called Jeremy Bentham who discovered the principle, back in the eighteenth century. He used it to design a self-regulating prison in which every inmate belived himself observed by the guards. He called it the Panopticon - the All-Seeing. VIGILANCE is our Panopticon, Holly. And pretty soon everyone in Europe is going to walk inside it of their own free will."

In the final book of the trilogy, layers upon layers of conspiracy and scheming past and present come to light, and looming over eveything, the shadow of the CIA. Kat, Holly and Daniele get themselves into deep waters, as their separate investigations converge and they realise the scale of what is planned for Venice.

I was sorry it had to end as it did for characters, although I guess it was inevitable, but there was plenty of excitement along the way. ( )

The Traitor – The Final Act

The Traitor is the final part of the Carnivia Trilogy by Jonathan Holt set around the beautiful and scenic city of Venice. Just as Venice is the magnificent backdrop to a thriller that at times is jaw dropping that illuminates part of the CIA’s mucky hands in Italian politics of the Cold War era. The Traitor has all the ingredients you expect from a successful thriller trilogy, a breathtaking storyline, brilliant writing with plenty of suspense and a stunning finale.

Captain Kat Tapo is a Captain in the Carabinieri and she has been given her first murder investigation to lead, but like all things she soon discovers things may not be as straightforward as they should be. A body discovered on an exclusive beach outside Venice has been found in Freemason garb minus his tongue and his neck is severed and she is being told by the Medical Examiner that things will be tough as many in the Carabinieri were Freemasons. She has a new deputy who is being sick at the sight of a dead body who is there to spy on her. Not much could go wrong from there with every door closing in front of her.

Holly Bolland a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army Corps based in Italy is still on rest after being rescued in the previous book The Abduction. She is at home in the USA when she discovers a memo written by her father before his stroke and locked in syndrome robbed him of his life. The memo is written about CIA activity in Italy and what it may or may not have done in the years of trouble there. She decides she needs to return to Italy and finally find the answers to her father’s questions and she must meet former CIA station head Ian Gilroy.

Daniele Barbo is still locking himself away from the people of Venice in his decaying Palace while he decides what to do with Carnivia. He still has many unresolved issues that cause him to be distant from most people he is considering just giving Carnivia away to its users and this alone could cause chaos that he has not foreseen.

In Libya a younger hacker is showing an Imam and a Commander how through the use of technology and the internet you can cause enough chaos from one place without much effort and get maximum effect. He shows them both that they can cause disaster in Italy from another country as he switches off the fans in the Frejus road tunnel and the cars start to pile up and the fire kills deaths follow, they are impressed and send him to Italy to plan and action an attack.

As Kat, Holly and Daniele progress with their various inquiries they start to uncover the answers that have haunted them across the trilogy. As the end becomes closer their investigations come together with surprising outcomes and the reader finally gets the answers they have asked throughout the trilogy.

This is a stylish and intelligent thriller that delivers on all levels for the reader to enjoy and at the same time saddening as we may not see these characters again. This is well written, and using Italy’s dark past and Venice as a backdrop is inspired as you this is a story of secrets and lies. A wonderful thriller, a fantastic end to the trilogy. ( )