Curtains for the Cardinal

Rating:
Summary: What a Tapestry!
Review: It's more than just curtains for the cardinal! Elizabeth Eyre makes Act V of "Hamlet" seem tame, if you consider the "body count" involved! It's a stabbing here, a cremation there, a blinding here, and over there, more maiming and mayhem!

So it goes for Eyre's third novel featuring the indomitable Sigismondo. In "Curtains for the Cardinal," the author spins quite the tangled web in this tapestry of a plot set in Renaissance Italy. And the vision of dukes and princes and clerics is

not altogether a happy, or pleasing, one!

On a visit to the Duke Livio's estate, Sigismondo, always followed by his half-wit attendant/confidant Benno and his dog Biondello, is witness to the Duke's famed "fit of rage" (some would call it madness!). In this one, he decapitates his own son! Sigismondo seizes the moment and, quick-thinking man he is, spirits away the Duke's daughter before she also befalls such a fate. The Lady Minerva has been promised to another Duke's son in marriage, in what could be foreseen as a great political coup between the two families! Minerva is quickly whisked out of town and safely hidden.

We then meet Cardinal Petrucci. If ever there was a Church official not deserving of his rank, this Cardinal is he. Conniving, lecherous, greedy, the Cardinal gets ready to further his own causes when, viola, up in flames he goes, the victim of an assassin. Much hysteria, naturally, abounds, and the plot becomes ever so much more convoluted. Again, Sigismondo and Co. to the rescue. Eyre re-introduces us to Angelo, the "beautiful and heavenly" Angelo, who is working the crowds as a magician.

Suffice it to say, all the problems are solved, the Lady Minerva is wed, and all is happy in Italy. For this time. Eyre has another book to follow. "Dirge for a Doge," the third in this series, is hot on the heels!

Eyre (actually a pseudomym of Jill Staynes and Margaret Storey) has created an absorbing historical series; she seems quite "on target," historically. While perhaps a bit of melodrama enters now and then, all is forgiven as the storyline is compelling and worth the read. Don't miss it!