In the final book of Holt's "Carnivia" trilogy (after The Abomination and The Abduction), Venetian carabiniere Capt. Kat Tapo is assigned a major homicide investigation—the ritual Masonic execution of a banker found on Venice's Lido beach, with his throat cut, tongue pulled out, and a "hoodwink" mask over his eyes. Tech wizard Daniele Barbo, creator of the highly encrypted virtual world Carnivia, prepares to hand it off to its anonymous followers—until he learns that the site will be used to facilitate a terrorist attack that may well destroy Venice, cripple Italy, and lead to worldwide devastation. Meanwhile, Second Lt. Holly Boland has stumbled upon a Cold War conspiracy in her father's papers. In time, the three story lines connect, their roots anchored in the CIA's long-running interference in the fate of Italy. VERDICT Intriguing from start to finish, Holt's nicely orchestrated plot—complex but never confusing—is a tremendous achievement, integrating numbers and mathematical problems, virtual worlds, hackers, worms, the Internet of Things, CIA infiltration of Italian left- and right-wing terrorists, Masonic rituals, Italian postwar coups/scandals/corruption, the vast U.S. military installations in Italy, and, not least of all, Venetian cooking! These elements, along with fascinating characters and locales, add up to a great read that both instructs and entertains.—Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson

British author Holt's masterly sequel to 2014's The Abduction concludes his Carnivia trilogy with a bang. Italian banker Alessandro Cassandre, whose unusual portfolio consisted of sophisticated credit default swaps and tax planning for charitable institutions, has been murdered in a manner suggesting Masonic ritual. The case falls to Venetian carabiniere Kat Tapo, who soon finds that her probing into the financier's affiliations isn't universally welcomed by her government colleagues. Meanwhile, Kat's close American friend, 2nd Lt. Holly Bolland, is determined to learn whether her father's connection with a notorious U.S. covert spy operation in Italy was the cause of his sudden illness. And genius Daniele Barbo, creator of the website Carnivia, who survived being kidnapped as a child in Italy, is preparing to relinquish his interest in Carnivia. Holt manages to make the risks posed by the growing movement toward smart devices intelligible and chilling, bringing all the pieces together plausibly and enabling newcomers to immediately identify with the multifaceted leads. Agent: Caradoc King, A.P. Watt (U.K.). (Dec.)