A Maxim Jakubowski selected title.
The opening volume of the Carnivia Trilogy is a fascinating story which blends an intriguing Dan Brown-like conspiracy mystery, Venice-set crime procedural tropes with a splendidly-drawn Italian female investigator who is paired up with a butch American Army sleuth and a fascinating cyber world and its eccentric but resolute inventor. The uncommon mix works most effectively and leaves so many avenues to explore in later volumes.
May 2013 Debut of the Month.
The Lovereading view...
With a gripping plot and complex characters this is the first of a dazzling, multi-layered trilogy set in modern-day Venice. The discovery of a murdered woman wearing priest's robes, The Abomination, leads a tenancious young police officer into a deadly web of secrets that stretch back to The Balkan War. Don't miss the start of what we think will be the next 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' book that everyone will be talking about.
In addition to our Lovereading expert opinion for The Abomination a small number of Lovereading members were lucky enough to be invited to review this title - 'AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME!!Is the only way I can describe this book!...It had me completely gripped till the early hours before sleep forced me to stop reading.' – Sam Lewis. Scroll down to read more reviews.
Click here to visit the Carnivia.com website.
A piece from Jonathan Holt on how he came to write The Abomination...
'I always dreamed of writing a book that everyone would read. Sometimes I thought that meant writing a thriller: sometimes it drew me towards more character-based stories. Over a period of about five years I kept trying ideas and plots out, only to abandon them because they felt too small and unambitious.
Eventually I managed to have an entire novel almost finished - but something about it still felt wrong. Then one night I dreamt that I burnt it - or at least, the twenty-first century equivalent: I dreamed I deliberately deleted every single copy from my computer. In the dream, it felt strangely liberating… so I decided to do it.
I put almost five year's work into my Recycle Bin and pressed 'permanently delete.' 'Are you sure?' asked the computer. Of course I wasn't sure! But afterwards I knew I'd made the right decision.' Click here to read the full comment.
A Piece of Passion from the Publisher on The Abomination...
'The Abomination plunged me into its world straight away. I was hooked from the very first page, where a murdered woman is washed up onto the steps of an ancient Venice church at midnight. She is found half-in, half-out of the freezing water, and she is wearing the robes of a priest – something that is totally forbidden by the Catholic church.
That was such a chilling, arresting opening scene, I didn’t think it could be bettered. But Jonathan Holt’s choice of locations just got more and more intriguing. By the time I had journeyed with his characters to an abandoned lunatic asylum on an uninhabited island, and then to Carnivia.com, an online simulation of Venice (an exact replica down to the cracks in the paving stones) where users are masked and secrets can be shared in absolute anonymity, I was already getting the tingling feeling you get with a really exciting submission.
Before long, what had started as a relatively straightforward murder mystery turned into the unravelling of a deep, dark conspiracy with its roots in the Balkan war - a conspiracy so disturbingly plausible that the first thing I did when I closed the book was start looking for more information on google – and then I wrote an email to my colleagues saying “We HAVE to buy this book.”
- Laura Palmer, Fiction Publisher. Click here to read the full comment.
THE VICTIM: A body has washed up from the Grand Canal. A woman, wearing the robes of a priest - a desecration known as The Abomination. THE INVESTIGATOR: The trail leads Captain Kat Tapo from the backstreets of Venice to an abandoned Catholic asylum.
| Primary Genre | Crime and Mystery |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
Win a Pair of Tickets to Agatha Christie’s The Hollow at a Venue of Your Choice.
Closing date: 15/10/2026
THE VICTIM: A body has washed up from the Grand Canal. A woman, wearing the robes of a priest - a desecration known as The Abomination.
The Abomination features in the following genres: Crime and Mystery, Thriller and Suspense, Debut Books of the Month, eBooks of the Month, Books with reviews by our Reader Review Panel, Fiction, Recommendations
Paperback, Hardback. Not Available.
The Abomination was written by Jonathan Holt and published by Head of Zeus
The Abomination has 435 pages
Yes it is part of The Carnivia Trilogy series
