`Few venture as thou hast in the alarming paths of sin.' Satan's final judgement on Victoria sums up a shocking novel, set in Venice at the end of the 15th century, that tracks the path of its heroine from abused victim to fully fledged criminal. Her conscious embodiment of vice seems to know no limits. Depicting unfettered desire and gratuitous cruelty, and challenging taboos of race and class, this tale of lust, betrayal and multiple murder has Dacre moving beyond the limits of contemporaneous gothic heroes (e.g. Matthew Lewis's Ambrosio) into a truly hellish zone of her own.