Review by Booklist Review
While at Cambridge, Arnold Clover admired Professor Marmaduke Godolphin and longed to be among the close-knit coterie of Godolphin's adoring students. But Arnold left Cambridge for a career as an archivist, never having been acknowledged by Godolphin or his students. Years later, Arnold has retired and moved to Venice, while Godolphin is the popular host of a TV series about history, particularly Italian history. So it's a shock when Arnold's Venetian friend, Luca Volpetti, says a mysterious man named Wolff has requested--on behalf of Godolphin--that Arnold and Luca help unearth two documents from Wolff's private collection, documents that, Godolphin claims, will "change the course of history" and reveal the "real" killer of Lorenzino de Medici. Godolphin has not only promised to pay Luca and Arnold a handsome fee, but has also brought some of his former students to Venice to provide support. But then terrible secrets begin to be revealed, and a horrific murder occurs. Hewson returns to Italy for this series launch, and it promises the same kind of character-rich, history-drenched reading experience that distinguished his earlier Nick Costa mysteries, set mainly in Rome.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The murder of British TV historian Marmaduke Godolphin, found floating in a Venetian canal with a stiletto blade in his chest, propels this gripping mystery from Hewson (The Garden of Angels). With the annual Carnival festival under way and tourists swarming the city, the police are determined to put the case to rest as quickly as possible. Enter retired archivist Arnold Clover, who was helping Godolphin search historical documents for clues Godolphin believed would reveal the identity of the assassins of Lorenzino de' Medici 500 years earlier. Meanwhile, Godolphin's acolytes, known as the Gilded Circle, have gathered in Venice and have competing theories about whether Lorenzino, who murdered his cousin Alessandro, the ruler of Florence, deserves his evil reputation. Could one of them have had motive to kill Godolphin? Clover must use the aged papers and his own 21st-century research skills to determine the truth and whether there's a connection between Lorenzino's death and Godolphin's. The wet, dark, cramped alleys of Venice provide an atmospheric backdrop as the action shifts in time before and after Godolphin's murder. Hewson educates and entertains in equal measure. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Hewson, author of the Nic Costa mysteries, introduces an elaborately detailed historical series, heavy with Venetian atmosphere. In 1548, Lorenzino de Medici was assassinated by two hired killers in Venice. In the present, when British media star Marmaduke Godolphin brings a group to Venice to reveal his latest project about Medici, he's stabbed with a stiletto on the same spot, and his body ends up in the canal. Before he was a media star, Godolphin was a history professor admired by four posh students nicknamed the Gilded Circle. He paid for those former students, plus his son and a young woman, to come to Venice, where he was to reveal a scandalous secret about Medici's murder. He needed help from retired British archivist Arnold Clover to uncover documents supporting his theory. Instead, Godolphin is dead. Captain Valentina Fabbri from the Caribinieri recruits Clover to tell her about the cast of characters surrounding Godolphin. Fabbri arrests all of his circle while she awaits Clover's story of history and scandal. VERDICT History buffs may appreciate this intricate character study more than most casual mystery readers.--Lesa Holstine
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An English archivist retired to Venice gets sucked into a 500-year-old murder case. TV historian Sir Marmaduke Godolphin, who hasn't had a hit series in years, doesn't think 75 is too old for a comeback. So he leaps at the news that Grigor Wolff, an antiquarian who's followed him appreciatively for years, has died and left him the Wolff Bequest, 13 trunks of papers that may throw dazzling new light on the assassinations of Duke Alessandro de' Medici in 1537 and Lorenzino de' Medici, the cousin long presumed to be his killer, 11 years later. Puffed up with anticipatory pride, Godolphin supplements the family circle including his wife, producer and former student, Lady Felicity, and his son, Jolyon, by gathering once more the Gilded Circle of academics he taught at Cambridge--Caroline Fitzroy, Bernard Hauptmann, and George Bourne--and he commissions Luca Volpetti of the State Archives and his recently widowed friend Arnold Clover to sift through the Wolff Bequest looking for two telltale papers that implicate Lodovico Buonarroti, better known as Michelangelo, in the killings. Are the letters describing the dagger the artist fashioned as a murder weapon and his participation in one of the murders genuine? Are they clever forgeries designed to fool modern readers? Or are they even more devious forgeries designed to be seen through? Before he can confront these questions, Godolphin himself is killed, leaving Clover and Capitano Valentina Fabbri to get to the bottom of a very deep well that promises surprising confessions about crimes long past and present. Not for dilettantes, but serious history buffs are in for a treat. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
