Essie Fox is author of Dangerous, a Lord Byron mystery set in Venice, published by Orenda Books. In this article, Essie shares her top six thrilling mystery books and films set in the atmospheric Italian city.
My novel Dangerous is a historical thriller with dark and gothic themes. A blend of fact and fiction, it follows Lord Byron during the years he lived in Venice – in particular, the time when a novel called The Vampyre was falsely published in his name. I expanded that story to create a mystery in which women known to him are found dead with wounded throats, leading to rumours that he is a murderer: a murderer so depraved he has written The Vampyre as a thinly veiled confession. To clear his name, he must turn detective to uncover the real killer.
Venice itself is the perfect setting for a novel, with its festivals and myths, and ancient architectural splendour, with labyrinthine passageways often leading to dead ends, or into churches full of music, works of art and sacred relics, and then the crumbling palazzos rising over the canals where waters lap like listless ghosts on the mouldering stones. Little wonder that the otherworldly ‘La Serenissima’ provides the haunting backdrop for so many mysteries, both in literature and film – and here I have listed a small number of suggestions ...
The Haunted Hotel, by Wilkie Collins (1878)
‘Every human creature, with the slightest claim to a place in society, knew the Countess Narona. An adventuress with a European reputation of the blackest possible colour – such was the general description of the woman with the deathlike complexion and the glittering eyes.’
A Venetian hotel was once the crumbling house leased by an English lord with his mysterious new wife, the Countess Narona. Since his death from bronchitis, for which his widow has claimed a very large insurance payment, the palazzo has been refurbished. When his English family, and a lover who was jilted, arrive to discover the truth about his death and to stay in the hotel, they are tortured by nightmares and awake to ghostly visions.
Although this book only becomes truly interesting towards the final third, Wilkie Collins is an author whose work feels almost modern – nothing like the style of his friend, Charles Dickens. With themes of fraud and betrayal, with the solving of clues that will eventually lead to the exposure of a murder, this Victorian era novel is something of a prototype for future mysteries to come.
The Talented Mr Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith (1955)
Highsmith's psychological thriller is a masterclass in tension. The novel follows the young Ripley, a small-time scam criminal, after he chances to meet with a wealthy shipping magnate, then travels to Italy to persuade the magnate's son to return to America and join the family business.
Ripley finds Dickie, the son, and soon becomes obsessed with his luxurious lifestyle and elegant appearance. But when he fears being shunned by the young man he so admires, Ripley murders his friend and steals his identity. Living on Dickie's trust fund, Ripley murders again to avoid being exposed, before eventually moving to a palazzo in Venice. Interrogated there by the Italian police, and an American detective sent by Dickie's father, somehow Ripley succeeds in evading suspicion.
The book has inspired radio and stage dramatisations, films and serialisations, all taking full advantage of the Venetian settings. Perhaps best known is the 1999 Minghella film starring Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. More recently Andrew Scott played the lead character of Ripley in the acclaimed 2023 Netflix series.
Don't Look Now, Daphne Du Maurier (1971)
Although best known for the film made in 1973, this was originally written by Du Maurier and published in a short-story collection entitled 'Not after Midnight'.
Starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, the movie follows a young couple who travel to Venice as they grieve for a lost daughter. There John, the husband, works on a church restoration and Laura, his wife, encounters two old women, one of whom is clairvoyant and insists that their daughter is sending warnings of danger. Dismissing the claim at first, John soon becomes fixated on mysterious sightings related to their daughter, and he very nearly dies in a building accident. Tortured by ghostly visions, and a mysterious figure always wearing a red coat, much like the one his daughter wore on the day of her death, John is lured into the trap of a horrifying climax.
The Comfort of Strangers, by Ian McEwan (1981)
A truly harrowing story of sadistic sexual murder, and not for the faint of heart, this novel follows a young couple who are in love, but somewhat bored, as they travel to a city that is not named, but surely Venice, as they seek to reignite some excitement in their lives. There they meet an older couple who lure them into their home, where sordid secrets are revealed, leading to tragic consequences.
The film by the same name, made in 1990, stars Christopher Walken, Rupert Everett, Natasha Richardson, and Helen Mirren. The Venice in this story is an exotic deadly maze in which the lost are only doomed to the darkest destinies.
Carnival for the Dead, by David Hewson (2011)
‘In Venice the past was more reticent. Beyond the tourist sights, San Marco and the Rialto, it lurked in the shadows, seeping out of the cracked stones like blood from ancient wounds, as if death itself was one more sly performance captured beneath the bright, all-seeing light of the lagoon. In this immersive mystery, feisty forensic pathologist Teresa Lupo visits Venice in February, during the time of Carnivale, to investigate the disappearance of her beloved Aunt Sofia. Unsettled by a meeting with a masked man who wears the costume of a medieval plague doctor, she settles herself in her aunt's dishevelled flat, where she is further unnerved when a neighbour delivers the pages of a book in which both she and her aunt appear to feature in the plot. With clues being linked to Venetian art and culture, Teresa must unravel these stories within stories. Have they been sent by Sofia – or have they come from an abductor?
Venetian Gothic, Philip Gwynne Jones (2020)
It is The Day of the Dead, and on the cemetery island of San Michele an empty coffin is unearthed in an area of the graveyard given over to the English. From this point on, Nathan Sutherland, the Venetian British consul delves into the past of a noble family. Meanwhile, a British journalist has disappeared into thin air. A young tourist with an interest in the Venetian islands is found drowned in the lagoon. Finally, a dreadful secret is revealed on San Michele.
Hauntingly sinister, this novel seamlessly blends a world of culture and crime in the floating world of Venice – a world of light and shining beauty, but with a dark, dank underbelly.
