The Malice of Fortune [Hardcover]

Review

There is a Tag line on the front of this book that goes "A Simmering stew, thick with chicanery, Bloodshed, code breaking and Puzzle solving."

This is about as accurate a review as you will probably find.

For me the book was not my normal fare, there was not a lot to love about any of the characters, even though we saw the story through the eyes of first Damiata and then Niccolo. Whilst the story was at times tragic, at others horrific and bloody with the murders committed by the killer. There seemed very little that was personal for me in the tale.

The scene setting and history is wonderful, and very atmospheric, you can feel the cold of the sea and of the winter nights. But while i could feel the time period , the weather, the violence and i could feel the momentous history and occasion. I could not feel the desire, the passion and the fear of the main characters.

I will take that failing as my own not the author, i think this is a book well worth reading, despite it not hitting every chord with me.

This is not a blood and thunder action book, it is not action adventure, it is a romantic tragedy set in the back drop of history, with character names that just leap off the page. Borgia, Machiavelli and Da Vinci to name a few. This alone makes it worth a look. I hope the romantic tragedy angle works for you, i wish it had for me, because if it had this would have been right up there in great reads this year.

Recommended

(Parm)

Ever since Pope Alexander Borgia's son, the Duke of Gandia was murdered, the Courtesan Damiata has lived in fear. As his lover, she knows that the Pope suspects that she had betrayed his whereabouts to his enemies and he is not a man to cross. So when she is arrested along with her son and taken to the Pope's palace she fears the worst.

While the Pope would like nothing better than to throw her into a cell he instead sends her across Italy to investigate the murder of his beloved son. With her son a hostage, Damiata knows she has no choice but to find the truth.

Traveling across a war torn Italy, she finds herself in the middle of a power struggle between the Pope's son, the Duke of Valentino and the leaders of the Condottieri.

These mercenary armies are bringing terror and despair to Italy and they are intent on maintaining their positions but the Duke is equally determined to destroy their power and build a new Italy.

In the midst of this murky and dangerous situation, Damiata enlists the help of a young Florentine diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli.

With the help of the Duke's Military engineer, Leonardo di Vinci they must investigate a series of gruesome murders that involves witches, sex, some of the most powerful men in Italy and a deranged killer who seems to take delight in taunting them.

Can Leonardo's new science of observation and Niccolo's `science of men' help unravel the mystery and bring the killer to justice?

I have to say that when I first received this book to review that I wasn't that hopeful. It takes a brave author to write a book that includes such famous characters as Di Vinci and Machiavelli, to then package them as some sort of `crime fighting duo' is even braver!

I decided to give it a go and I'm glad to say it was worth it. The characters are well written and the author quite sensibly uses Leonardo sparingly. It would have been quite easy to turn him into a sort of Sherlock Holmes character but he comes across as a little mad, bursting with ideas and obsessed with measuring the world, a little how I imagine he really was like.

The author is also clever in writing Machiavelli at the beginning of his career. By writing him as a penniless diplomat he can pretty much write him as he likes. It is interesting to read as Machiavelli struggles to delve into the mind of the killer and also has to deal with the men of power that he slowly develops the ideas that will form his most famous work `The Prince'.

The book has two main narrators, Damiata tells her story and then at about halfway though the book Machiavelli takes over, this leads to my only real gripe with the book.

The pace of the story is a little on the slow side and just as you get used to the narration style of Damiata it changes to Machiavelli who narrates in a completely different style, this causes the book to sag in the middle as you try to get used to the the new style.

To be honest this is a minor gripe because the story is gripping enough for you to overcome it and the author really captures the violence and chaos 16th century Italy and the murder mystery is well enough written to keep you guessing to the culprit almost to the end of the book.

If you are looking for something different in your His-Fic reading then I can recommend the Malice of Fortune.

When an author tackles a time period that a well-known franchise has covered with characters that gamers are familiar with, an author really has to do something that not only makes the reader sit up and pay attention but gives them something that is totally unique.

What Michael presents within this book is a story that fans of crime will absolutely love, there's mystery, there's some macabre twists and when you add to the mix not only solid research but characters that could step out and function in the modern day, really does go to show not only a unique book but something that was a pure joy to read.

Within this title, Machiavelli and Da Vinci both bring their specialities to the fore with cunning reasoning, clever lateral thinking and of course personalities that are larger than life demonstrate that these two could have been the Holmes and Watson of their day. Throw into the mix some wonderful authorly sleight of hand, great prose and solid dialogue all round makes this a book that I'm going to be recommending to quite a few crime fans.