The Iron Tongue of Midnight

In the fourth Tito Amato mystery, castrato Tito and his artist brother-in-law, Gussie, are invited to the Dolfinos' country villa--Tito to star in a new opera and Gussie to do paintings of their vineyards. An unidentified man is found murdered in a hallway, the leading lady in the troupe of musicians turns out to be Tito's long-lost sister, more murders occur, and timely explanatory letters from Tito's brother in Constantinople deepen the puzzle. Descriptions of the customs and the countryside of eighteenth-century Italy are colorful, thanks to Geoffrey Blaisdell's capable reading. Blaisdell's first-person narration as Tito is appealing, and his other characterizations are nicely understated. The plotting is swift, if predictable, but listeners won't mind the contrivances since it's all a lot of fun. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

January 14, 2008
In Myers's agreeable fourth mystery to feature 18th-century Venetian castrato Tito Amato (after 2006's Cruel Music
), Tito has barely settled in at a country villa, where he's participating in a private performance commissioned by a wealthy opera lover, when a stranger is found murdered in the villa's hallway. To his further astonishment, one of the singers gathered there, under a false identity, is his sister, Grisella, who left the family years before and for whom his brother, Alessandro, is just then searching in Constantinople. Tito attempts to solve the murder and uncover his sister's real story amid musical rehearsals, regular epistles from Alessandro and more deaths. The book's diction and attitudes have a contemporary rather than a historical ring, and Alessandro's unrealistically prompt and well-dramatized letters are an obvious fictional contrivance. Still, Tito proves himself a lively narrator, and fans of cozier period puzzles and Italian opera will enjoy his company as well as the book's appealingly bucolic, autumnal setting.