Book Reviews

About the author: C.J. Sansom earned a Ph.D. in history and was a lawyer before becoming a full-time writer. Dissolution (2003) was his first book in the Matthew Shardlake mystery series.  They include Dissolution (2003), Dark Fire (2004), Sovereign (2006) and Revelation (2008).  He lives in Sussex, England.

Notes on the book:  Dissolution has established historian C. J. Sansom as one of the most promising new writers of detective fiction.  The book is set in 1537, when England is torn by the Reformation. The terrifying Henry VIII has proclaimed himself Supreme Head of the Church and his power is being enforced by savage new laws and a network of secret informers. A team of commissioners is sent out to investigate the country’s monasteries. At one, a commissioner is found dead, his head severed from his body, his murder accompanied by sinister acts of sacrilege. The hero, Matthew Shardlake, a hunchback lawyer, intelligent and incorruptible, is ordered by Thomas Cromwell to uncover the truth. His investigation involves him in treachery and danger, leading him to question everything he believes. The sights, the voices, the very smell of this turbulent age seem to rise from the pages.

One of the murder suspects is Brother Gabriel, the sacristan, who is strongly attracted to Commissioner Shardlake’s virile young assistant, Mark Poer.

About the author: Sarah Dunant lives in London. Her latest novels, The Birth of Venus (2003), and her most recent book, In the Company of the Courtesan (2006), are set in Renaissance Italy. She is the creator of private investigator Hannah Wolfe, featured in Fatlands (1993), winner of a Crime Writers’ Association Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction.

The dark, wild tale of the Merovingian queen,Radegunda, helped Sarah Dunant while she was researching Sacred Hearts. 

“I first read Julia O’Faolain’s vibrant and strange Women in the Wall two years ago, just before I started writing my own novel about nuns in a 16th century Italian convent. I had just come out of a year incarcerated in libraries and archives in Britain and Italy, and my head was reeling with wondrous and terrifying images and ideas. Most writers relate to that feelings of panic as you put away the notebooks and move  to the keyboard, and I thought O’Faolain’s journey into a darker, wilder moment of history – the political and religious chaos of sixth-century Gaul and the life of Radegunda, who began as captured queen to King Clotair and ended as the founding abbess of a convent in Poitiers, and a Merovingian saint – might just help.”

Notes on the book:  Sacred Hearts is set in a convent in Ferrara, Italy, where a teenage nun attempts to break out to be reunited with her lover.  The novice nun, Serafina, is befriended by the convent’s apothecary, who initially tries to subdue her hysteria with herbal remedies. As an unlikely relationship builds between the two women, other figures stand watching and waiting..

Learn more about Sacred Hearts at Sarah Dunant’s website.

About the author: Juan Gomez-Jurado, 31, is an award-winning journalist, best selling author and screen writer. He currently lives in Madrid, Spain.

Notes on the book: In the days following Pope John Paul II’s death, a cardinal is found brutally murdered in a chapel in Rome, his eyes gouged and his hands cut off. Called in for the grisly case, police inspector Paola Dicanti learns that another cardinal was recently found dead; he had also been tortured.

Desperate to find the killer before another victim dies, Dicanti’s investigation is soon joined by Father Anthony Fowler, an American priest and former Army intelligence officer examining sexual abuse in the Church, who knows far more about the killer than Dicanti can possibly imagine.

As Inspector Dicanti and Fr. Fowler struggle through a maze of tantalizing clues, they begin to question whether someone in the Vatican is aiding their cause or abetting a murderer. And when evidence leads them to powerful figures within the church hierarchy, their own pursuit of the truth may make them the next pawns to be sacrificed in a terrifying and deadly game.

About the author:

Andrea De Carlo is one of Italy’s most successful contemporary novelists. He has published 13 novels in Italy and his books have been translated into 21 languages. He has worked as assistant director to Italian filmmakers from Frederico Fellini to Michaelangelo Antonioni, and directed an acclaimed film adaptation of his first novel, Treno di Paana.

http://www.andreadecarlo.com/eng/bio.shtml

Notes on the book:

Sea of Truth is a sophisticated thriller set in the shadow of the Vatican.

Two brothers, Fabio and Lorenzo Telmari–one a corrupt politician, the other an impassioned writer and the novel’s hero–inherit a secret upon the death of their father, an internationally renowned virologist. At his funeral, Lorenzo is approached by a mysterious redheaded woman who asks him a single question and then disappears: “Have you ever heard of Ndiogene?”

From then on, Lorenzo’s life undergoes rapid changes involving political and religious intrigue, narrow escapes, and a life-altering love affair. He learns that at the time of his death his father had two documents written by Ndiogene, a Senegalese cardinal who had recently died of AIDS. These documents contain slander against the Catholic church, and controversial opinions about population control and other issues.

About the author:

Beverly Graves Myers was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. As a youngster she fell in love with opera and mystery, which made her the only nine-year-old on the block listening to Rigoletto while reading Agatha Christie.

A yen for faraway times and places led Bev to study history at the University of Louisville.  A career in public psychiatry gave her a good perspective of why people behave the way they do, in anger as well as love.

Cruel Music is the third novel in the Baroque Mystery series featuring Tito Amato, a renowned castrato in 18th century Italy.

Learn more about Beverle Graves Myers and her historical mysteries on her website and on her blog.

Notes on the book:

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 next papal election.

Tito spys as he serenades Cardinal Lorenzo Fabiani and his guests.  Pope Clement XII is sinking fast, and two candidates emerge as leading contenders for St. Peter’s throne.

Tito’s investigation leads him into Roman subcultures–communities of goddess worshippers right under the Church’s nose, and church leaders who are more interested in natural science than theology.

Background notes:

The character of Tito Amato is based on the 17th century castrato Atto Melani.

Melani was born in 1626 in Pistoia, a small Tuscan town. Atto and three of his six brothers were all castrated for the sake of their lovely voices.

Learning court manners along with his vocal exercises, Melani soon attracted the patronage of nobleman Mattias de’Medici. While their precise relationship is buried under the weight of years, it appears the singer may have entertained de’Medici with more than music..

Melani also added the role of spy when Cardinal Mazarin of France made a request for Italian singers to entertain the French court. Besides performing on stage, Melani would have serenaded his noble patrons at banquets and intimate suppers. He quickly learned to turn his talents and good looks to his advantage.He also kept his ears open for information which would interest Mattias de’Medici.

Melani went on to perform the same function for Cardinal Mazarin at German courts. Still later, he became involved in a scheme to gain the papal throne for Cardinal Giulio Rospigliosi, who became Pope Clement IX.