I love the marshal but this one is too gothic for my taste. ( )

The Marshall is summoned to the Palazzo of a Marchessa, who for financial reasons has sublet several of the smaller buildings out. Her son, a young man of "delicate" condition, lives up in the tower with the dwarf to care take him.

The Marchessa's husband has been found dead, seemingly by suicide, but the preferred verdict needs to be "by accident" in order for the Marchessa to collect on the insurance policy. The problem is that the body had been moved and there is much more going on than meets the eye.....

This book just didn't really hold my interest, but I finished it. ( )

8th in the Marshal Guarnaccia series set in Florence.

The book opens with the marshal trying to write his report on the events of June 24th. In his memory, he is looking down from a tower in an old palazzo at a body crumpled in the courtyard. A woman kneels beside the body, wailing in grief.

Switch immediately to the immediate past, the 2nd Sunday in June. The Marshal, on duty as security during the finals of the Florentine version of “football”—a game dominated by huge men in period costume slugging it out, quiet literally, over possession of a ball—is suddenly called into the Palazzo Ulderighi by a dwarf to view the body of Buongianni Corsi, wealthy husband of the Marchesa Ulderighi, one of the old Florentine nobility. Corsi’s body lays in the gun room, ostensibly looking as if there had been an accident while cleaning one of his guns. It is up to the Marshal to break the news to the Marchesa.

The first in what will be many visits to the old house, the Marshal, son of Sicilian peasants, is intimidated by the Marchesa, who represents the nobility so far above his head socially, and then by the palazzo itself. He is afraid, because he will be expected to make a report on this death; if his report displeases the Marchesa, she has enough influence to have him transferred out of Florence.

This fear dominates his investigation, as he is convinced his superiors want him to merely go through the motions of an investigation and write a report that will please the Marchesa. This becomes ever more distressing to him as his investigation leads him to believe that it was not an accident that killed Corsi, but perhaps suicide and even murder. How he solves the case and resolves his dilemma results.

While this series does not have a bad book in it, this particular installment was the least satisfying to me. The Marshal’s fear never seems quite real, and becomes irrititating in the way Nabb presents it. The plot is confusing and was hard for me to follow, to keep track of what was going on.

Yet there is no taking away from Nabb’s strengths as a writer in the genre. As always, her marvelous characterizations, of Guarnaccia, his family, Caaptain Maestrangelo, Brigadier Lorenzini, the one-time characters, and of Florence itself lift this book up beyond the mundane. In addition, in this book, we get a glimpse of an old Florentine tradition—thugs, really, playing for one of the four teams corresponding to each Quarter of the city (that of the Marshal’s Quarter is the Whites), where processions in medieval costume precede mass, more or less controlled violence on the field, where it is perfectly possible for one player’s ear to be bitten off by another! But as is reality, no matter how appalled the Marshal is, his two boys utterly adore the spectacle, screaming their support for the Whites. It si the perfect touch, the Marshal and his family.

Though not the strongest entry in the series, still recommended for a better than average read. ( )