In 1691 a Sicilian artist, Gaetano Zummo, is summoned to Florence by its leader, the grand duke, a patron of the arts who’s intrigued by Zummo’s wax figurines depicting the decomposition of plague victims and other unfortunates. The grand duke is still wounded by a painful marriage that ended when he banished his wife to a convent, and he has a dodgy assignment for Zummo that could go very, very wrong. Zummo doesn’t like to linger long in one place, given that he left behind some secrets of his own in Sicily, but refusing the grand duke’s request could mean penury, torture, even death. In this town, people who break the moral code (gays, adulterers) are executed. Innocent people can be hauled in by the authorities, tortured and left crippled with no hope of justice. Newcomers who don’t know their way around can be lured to their death in a ditch or well. This is a fast-moving novel with a growing sense of dread, set in a world where the beauty of religion and the arts can’t hide the rot within.
