The Figaro Murders
Lorenzo Da Ponte, court librettist in 1786 Vienna, is in trouble: not only hasn’t he finished his libretto for Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro, which is scheduled to open in a few weeks, but he finds himself the prime suspect in a murder case. On an errand for his barber, Lorenzo visits the barber’s fiancée, a maid in the household of a baron, where he gets into an argument with a young man who is the baron’s page. When the boy is found dead a few hours later, the Minister of Police asks Lorenzo to go undercover in the baron’s household, posing as poetry tutor to the baroness, to find the murderer, or face charges of murder himself. At the same time, Lorenzo searches for the barber’s birth mother. The dead boy, it seems, had known who she was, but never had time to reveal the secret.
This debut novel is first in an intriguing new series, vividly conveying the flavor of 18th century Vienna. Readers familiar with The Marriage of Figaro will recognize parallels between characters and situations in this novel and Mozart’s opera, which adds enjoyment, but The Figaro Murders is highly recommended to any mystery fan.
