PORTRAIT OF A LADY

Leonardo da Vinci and a girl masquerading as his apprentice team up for the second time (The Queen’s Gambit, 2008) to solve murders in Castle Sforza.

Da Vinci, the ultimate Renaissance man, has found time between inventing the submarine and painting the Mona Lisa to solve mysteries for the Duke of Milan. When a pretty young servant of the contessa falls to her death, Leonardo the Florentine realizes instantly that her death was no accident. But despite his genius, Leonardo, that master of the human form, has failed to recognize that his faithful apprentice and crack investigator Dino is really Delfina, a girl pulling a Yentl, despite the fact that Dino is supposedly intimate enough with the Master to know his sleeping habits and the contents of his notebooks. To seek out the truth among the serving women, Leonardo disguises Dino as a girl (Delfina becomes Dino becomes Delfina), where she suspects, yet is magnetically drawn to, the dashing, dastardly captain of the guard. When another death thickens the mystery, Delfina must confront her divided loyalties and uncover the truth. This wildly implausible tale unfolds in a style both florid and repetitive, with adverbs on pointless parade and ham-fisted reminders of events related just pages before. By the halfway point, the plot quickens enough to provide a welcome distraction from the stylistic infelicities, but those blunders never let up.

Amateur and utterly unbelievable.