The action returns to New York City, Ullman confused, near-suicidal and haunted by the fear that all he has not believed may be real. As she leaps to her death, Ullman hears from her, in that same devilish voice, a recitation from Milton’s epic.
Before he can gather his wits, Tess apparently commits suicide. In Venice, Ullman confronts one of the devil’s Legion infecting an Italian professor’s body. Acting on behalf of a nameless client, the Thin Woman, as Ullman calls her, asks him to observe a “phenomenon,” a thing she too has seen, but “there is no name for it I could give.” That evening Ullman’s wife tells him she’s leaving him for another man, and he decides to escape to Venice accompanied by his beloved daughter, Tess, “a smart, bookishly aloof girl,” who like him is plagued by melancholy. In Pyper’s ( The Guardians, 2011, etc.) sixth novel, professor David Ullman’s marriage has imploded, his closest confidant has terminal cancer, and he’s been approached by a mysterious emaciated woman offering an all-expenses-paid first-class trip to Venice.Ī renowned expert on Milton’s Paradise Lost, Ullman is a Columbia University professor.
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