During this period of enforced domesticity KOBO ebooks are offering a number of titles for free. This includes my novel ASCENSION, the first in the Alvise Marangon series.

You can find it at this link 

Here’s what people had to say about it:

Andrea di Robilant:

Gregory Dowling has done much more than write a riveting mystery set in eighteenth-century Venice: his wonderful new book, Ascension, is a vivid and intimate portrait of the Most Serene Republic in its declining years. And Dowling, who knows Venice very well and is at home with the intricacies of Venetian history, is the perfect guide for this delightful journey. This is a wonderful addition to the genre of the Venetian thriller in the tradition of Donna Leon and Michael Didbin. 

Francesco da Mosto:

A special thriller set in the Venetian past, its colors and intrigues so vividly described…

Antonia Senior, The Times:

BOOK OF THE MONTH

Ascension hurls the reader into violent 18th-century Venice. Our guide is Alvise Marangon, a Venetian raised in London who ferries vacuous, touring English youths from the art galleries to the brothels. When the tutor of one of his charges is murdered Marangon becomes embroiled in the mystery. What connection does the death have to Venice’s powerful nobility? Is the crime linked to the killing of gnagas, male prostitutes who dress as women and wear cat masks? Marangon’s quest for the truth leads him through the dark canals and streets of Venice, aided by his friends, Bepe, the gondolier and Lucia, a bookseller’s wilful daughter.

Dowling teaches American literature at a university in Venice. It shows. Ascension blends a laconic, amused style informed by American detective literature with a profound knowledge of Venetian geography and history. Stylish, clever and gripping. 

Elizabeth Buchan, The Daily Mail:

By 1749 Venice is past her imperial heyday, but still ruled by a meticulous and far-reaching state apparatus, and her pleasures, illicit or otherwise, are a magnet for all Europe.

The Venetian-born, London-raised, sharp-witted and resourceful Alvise Marangon offers his services as a tour guide of the Grand Canal to a youthful Englishman bent on vice.

He soon finds himself entangled with a series of murders of male prostitutes, not to mention running up against the Venetian secret service, who are determined to uncover a conspiracy.

The book is steeped in Venetian history and occasionally the author’s desire to impart it holds up the pace.

But don’t be put off: Alvise is a terrific character, the murder mystery is absorbingly ingenious and, if you are a sucker for Venice, the sights, sounds and smells of its streets and canals ooze up from the page.

Historical Novels Society: Issue 75 (February 2016):

This is a wonderful page turner with a fabulous cast of characters from the gambling dens to the theatres, the booksellers to the taverns, the courtesans to the gondoliers. Alvise is able to use his innate sense of theatre and charm to move fluidly between all the classes, and this also makes him a perfect spy. Dowling’s storytelling is superb, and the sights, sounds and smells of 18th-century Venice are brilliantly realised. Although the plot is resolved, the book has the feel of the first in a series so I hope there will be a return for Alvise. This book would be ideal for fans of Diana Bretherick and Robin Blake.