Book description
Tito Amato returns from an operatic tour expecting to relax with his
family. Instead he finds his merchant brother Alessandro imprisoned on a
trumped-up smuggling charge, a capital crime in 1740 Venice. The senator
who controls Alessandro's fate is determined to have a Venetian as the
next pope. He forces Tito to Rome to sing at the villa of a powerful,
music-loving cardinal who will control the coming papal election. Spying
as he serenades Cardinal Fabiani and his guests, Tito peers into the
dark mirror of Roman politics. Pope Clement XII is sinking fast, and two
candidates emerge as leading contenders for St. Peter's throne. Will
Fabiani support the highborn Venetian whose secret passion is tinkering
with electrical experiments? Or the humble cardinal with the gift of
healing and a mysterious past? The discovery of a beautiful corpse in
Fabiani's garden complicates Tito's mission. Fabiani believes that a
member of his household killed the young maid in a fit of madness, but
Tito follows clues that indicate a more complex motive, assisted by his
irrepressible manservant Benito and Englishman Gussie Rumbolt. From the
heights of the Janiculum Hill to the muddy waters of the Tiber, from a
cozy Trastevere cookshop to the chilly corridors of the Quirinal Palace,
the trio wrestles with events that could change the course of history.
Can Tito stop the killer and affect the election before Pope Clement
takes his last breath? Or will Alessandro face the scaffold? Myers's
third mystery to feature soprano Tito Amato, a renowned castrato in
18th-century Italy, gets off to a slow start, but the pace soon picks
up. Tito finds himself in Rome, singing in the house of Cardinal Lorenzo
Fabiani. Chez Fabiani is abuzz with papal politics-Pope Clement XII's on
his deathbed, and the two men most likely to replace him need Fabiani's
support if they are to prevail. When Fabiani's mother's maid turns up
strangled in Fabiani's garden, Fabiani covers up the crime, but Tito,
worried he'll be falsely implicated should the corpse come to light,
decides to get to the bottom of things. His investigation leads him into
fascinating Roman subcultures-communities of goddess worshipers, who
practice ancient paganism right under the church's nose, and church
leaders who are more interested in natural science than theology. Myers
(Interrupted Aria ) litters the book with coy references to the
castrato's surprising sex life, but leaves the details to the reader's
imagination. Beverle Graves Myers fell in love with opera at age nine
during a marionette production of Rigoletto. A Kentucky native, she
studied history at the University of Louisville and went on to earn a
degree in medicine. After a career in psychiatry, she devoted herself to
writing full-time. Beverle is the author of the Baroque mystery series
featuring Tito Amato.
