The Malice of Fortune: A Novel of the Renaissance [Paperback]

When Pope Alexander orders the courtesan Damiata to the remote fortress city of Imola to learn the truth behind the murder of his beloved son, Juan, she knows that failure comes at the price of her own child’s freedom.
 
However, a string of gruesome murders have left Imola’s residents too gripped by fear to help a lone woman. Enlisting the aid of the obscure Florentine diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli and the eccentric military engineer Leonardo da Vinci, Damiata sets off to decipher the killer’s taunting riddles: she with her street smarts, Leonardo with his groundbreaking “science of observation,” and Machiavelli with his new “science of men.”

“Intricate, rewarding. . . .The Malice of Fortuneis reminiscent of Umberto Eco’sThe Name of the Rosein that the intrigue is rich and is inextricably entwined in its world… A finely wrought history” —The Denver Post
 
 “A heady mix ofThe Da Vinci Code, Borgia politics andThe Silence of the Lambs. Think of it as CSI: Italy circa 1502, with Machiavelli as a detective and psychological profiler and da Vinci as history’s first forensic pathologist.” —Christian DuChateau, CNN.com 
 
“Ennis is an uncommonly graceful writer and a conscientious researcher. . . . [The Malice of Fortune] zips along, a pleasure.” —USA Today

“Stunning, terrifying, and utterly mesmerizing. I can honestly say I never fully appreciated the genius of Machiavelli, or the savagery of the Borgias, until now.” —Anne Fortier, author ofJuliet

“Machiavelli and [Da Vinci] aren’t just another Holmes and Watson. What Ennis has created is a scenario with two Sherlock Holmeses, each applying his unique approach to crime-solving in an age when even the most fundamental forensics techniques would be rlÓ*