When Pope Alexander Borgia dispatches Damiata, a beautiful courtesan, to the remote fortress city of Imola in Northern Italy to learn the truth behind the murder of his beloved son, she knows she cannot fail, for the Pope holds her own son hostage.

Once there, Damiata falls under the spell of the charismatic Duke Valentino Borgia, whose own life is threatened by the condottieri, a powerful cabal of mercenary warlords.

As the murders multiply, Damiata's search for the killer grows more urgent. And so she enlists the help of an obscure Florentine diplomat, Niccolò Machiavelli, and an eccentric military engineer, Leonardo da Vinci. Together they begin to decipher the killer's taunting riddles: Leonardo with his groundbreaking "science of observation" and Machiavelli with his new "science of men."

Traveling across a land torn apart by war, Damiata and Machiavelli enter a labyrinth of ancient superstition and erotic obsession to discover at its center a new face of evil and a terrible secret - a secret is still to be found within the lines of Machiavelli's most controversial book, The Prince.

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Product details

Listening Length	14 hours and 51 minutes
Author	Michael Ennis
Narrator	Adrianl Paul, Fred Sanders, John Lee, Carlotta Montanari
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date	02 October 2014
Publisher	Random House Audiobooks
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B00NOA7YSE
Best Sellers Rank	208,512 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 2,273 in Historical Mysteries (Audible Books & Originals) 10,750 in Historical Mystery

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K. HOOK

An absorbing read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 August 2013

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I started reading with a suspicion the book would be excessively graphic in its description of violence. This fear was not substantiated. The story is gripping, the characters believable. As a fan of historic fiction its foundation in fact was a bonus. Yes, there is violence and sex but neither are used as a cheap device to titillate readers. Any fan of who-dunnits and historic fiction should give this a try.

paul Brasseur

The Malice of Fortune

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 March 2014

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It only took a few days to 'land' in my hands. A great book and Amazon description of the book has pushed me to purchase it.
I enjoyed reading such a good book written in such a highly descriptive English.

I Will come back soon.
Best regards
Paul Brasseur

gerda niebler

Reviewed in Germany on 22 February 2013

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spannend bis zur letzten sekunde sollte in keiner sammlung fehlen einfach perfekt hoffentlich gibt es eine fortsetzung werde ich mir kaufen

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francesca

bel libro

Reviewed in Italy on 2 December 2013

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Come descritto nella spiegazione ed arrivato nei tempi previsti.

Un libro appassionante con personaggi ben descritti, intrighi e colpi di scena!

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lisaleo (Lisa Yount)

completely revamps ideas about Machiavelli

Reviewed in the United States on 11 November 2018

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The name Machiavelli and its related adjective, Machiavellian, summon up an image of clever, convoluted evil, gaining its ends through deception and manipulation of others. Many people therefore assume that Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote The Prince, the book from which these ideas grew, was himself a person of this kind, or at least approved of such behavior. As this fictional mystery—and the history on which it is based, apparently—make clear, however, this was not the case. On the contrary, Machiavelli was a thoughtful, honest, and (at least as portrayed in this book) even kind individual, a serious student of political science. The description did, however, apparently fit the “Prince” he described, Cesare Borgia, here usually called by his nickname of Valentino—even if Borgia may not have been guilty of the exact crimes Ennis ascribes to him.

Most of the characters in this story are real historical figures, and they make quite a lineup: not only Machiavelli and Borgia, but Borgia’s father, Rodrigo, who became Pope Alexander VI, an all-powerful political figure in the Europe of his time; Leonardo da Vinci; and Damiata, the mistress of Rodrigo Borgia’s murdered son, Juan. Much less is known about Damiata than about the others, so she is fairly heavily fictionalized in the book. Damiata, Machiavelli, and Leonardo all have reasons to want to identify the murderer of a series of women whose remains are treated in a particularly complex and gruesome manner, and they work together to trace him and try to work out the reasons behind his bizarre actions.

The characters were appealing, and I enjoyed the interaction between Damiata, Machiavelli, and Leonardo, different as they were. The mystery was intriguing, though the most likely murderer was not very hard to guess; his motives, however, remained fairly obscure. I think my greatest pleasure, though, was learning more about Machiavelli and finding that he was not a villain after all, but merely the observer of one.

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