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Knopf
September 2012
On Sale: September 4, 2012
416 pages ISBN: 0385536313 EAN: 9780385536318 Kindle: B007MGTOCU Hardcover / e-Book
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Against a teeming canvas of Borgia politics, Niccolò
Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci come together to unmask an
enigmatic serial killer, as we learn the secret history
behind one of the most controversial works in the western
canon, The Prince... When Pope Alexander dispatches a Vatican courtesan, Damiata,
to the remote fortress city of Imola to learn the truth
behind the murder of Juan, his most beloved illegitimate
son, she cannot fail, for the scheming Borgia pope holds her
own young son hostage. Once there, Damiata becomes a pawn in
the political intrigues of the pope’s surviving son, the
charismatic Duke Valentino, whose own life is threatened by
the condottieri, a powerful cabal of mercenary
warlords. Damiata suspects that the killer she seeks is one
of the brutal condottierri, and as the murders
multiply, her quest grows more urgent. She enlists the help
of an obscure Florentine diplomat, Niccolò Machiavelli, and
Valentino’s eccentric military engineer, Leonardo da Vinci,
who together must struggle to decipher the killer’s taunting
riddles: Leonardo with his groundbreaking “science of
observation” and Machiavelli with his new “science of men.”
Traveling across an Italy torn apart by war, they will enter
a labyrinth of ancient superstition and erotic obsession to
discover at its center a new face of evil—and a truth
that will shake the foundations of western civilization.
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