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Title: The Malice of Fortune

Author: Michael Ennis

Narrator: Adrianl Paul, Fred Sanders, John Lee, Carlotta Montanari

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14 hrs and 51 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-02-14

Publisher: Random House Audiobooks

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

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.

Members Reviews:

Niccolo Machiavelli, Private Eye

If youâve read The Prince, you probably think you know the work of Niccolo Machiavelli. Chances are, you think of him â as I always did â as the Renaissance figure who lionized a lying, cheating, brutal scoundrel as the ideal political and military leader. Having read The Malice of Fortune, I know better now.

This historical novel, framed as a murder mystery in which Machiavelli plays the part of the detective, lays out the basis on which he wrote The Prince and illuminates his relationship with Cesare Borgia, known widely then as Duke Valentino, the subject of that famous book. The Malice of Fortune is based on historian and journalist Michael Ennisâ intensive research into primary sources, its characters and the events it portrays all solidly grounded in historical evidence. Machiavelli and Borgia did, indeed, have a relationship that verged on intimate.

The novel is set in Central Italy in 1502-3, with the action moving to and from Rome and through a succession of minor cities and towns where Duke Valentino and his troops were billeted. Machiavelli has been dispatched by the town fathers of Florence to follow Valentino and report his observations along the way, as their city feared a calamitous attack by the mercenary condottieri with whom Valentino was then negotiating a peace treaty. In the town of Imola, Machiavelli meets the bewitching courtesan known as Madonna Damiata, who has come in search of evidence that will point to the murder of Duke Gandia, her lover and father of her son. She quickly embroils Machiavelli in her search. They proceed on the assumption that one of the leaders of the condottieri is the murderer â but which one, and under what circumstances, is entirely unclear.

The Duke of Gandia, born Giovanni or Juan Borgia, is Duke Valentinoâs (Cesare Borgiaâs) younger brother. The two are sons of the then-reigning Pope, the notoriously corrupt Rodrigo Borgia, who ruled as Pope Alexander VI.