Rizzio
A Novella
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3.6 • 13 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the multi-award-winning master of crime, Denise Mina delivers a radical new take on one of the darkest episodes in Scottish history—the bloody assassination of David Rizzo private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, in the queen’s chambers in Holyrood Palace.
On the evening of March 9th, 1566, David Rizzio, the private secretary of Mary, Queen of Scots, was brutally murdered. Dragged from the chamber of the heavily pregnant Mary, Rizzio was stabbed fifty six times by a party of assassins. This breathtakingly tense novella dramatises the events that led up to that night, telling the infamous story as it has never been told before.
A dark tale of sex, secrets and lies, Rizzio looks at a shocking historical murder through a modern lens—and explores the lengths that men and women will go to in their search for love and power.
Rizzio is nothing less than a provocative and thrilling new literary masterpiece.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Mina (The Less Dead) vividly recreates a gruesome episode from the Tudor era in this searing novella set mostly over the course of a single day, Mar. 9, 1566. Mary, Queen of Scots, is the target of a conspiracy. Her ambitious husband, Henry, Lord Darnley, joins a plot to have David Rizzio, Mary's personal secretary and close friend, murdered in front of the heavily pregnant queen in the hope the shock will cause her to miscarry, and thus strengthen Darnley's claim to the throne. The first chapter's title, "David Rizzio Plays Tennis with His Assassins," heightens the tension as readers come to dread Rizzio's inevitable fate. Mina interjects well-wrought characterizations into the events that follow the tennis game, which culminate in the invasion of Mary's chambers by 80 armed soldiers, who drag off the helpless Rizzio and stab him 56 times. The author's other judicious choice, to employ some anachronistic phrasing , creates a sense of immediacy. This superior historical thriller reads like a real-life episode of Game of Thrones.
