This was an unusual book, but only in the pace of the book. A fun historical mystery based around the premise that Michelangelo had sketched autopsy diagrams in a notebook that is much conjectured, but never confirmed historically. The mystery starts when a graduate student (Fiona or Finn Ryan) finds a loose page of what to her is obviously a page from this notebook, seemingly lost under a drawer that she is cataloging as an intern at a museum. The mystery is on!
I was particularly interested in the back story which centered on the theft and subsequent loss of many beautiful works of art during post-war Germany. There was also a third story within the story, about Pope Pius XII and his relationship with his niece and the thought that her son was also the son of the Pope (before he became Pope anyway). How they tie this all together is a bit of a stretch.
The book was good, the mystery was fun and being able to look up and learn about a topic I don’t know much about was interesting. But then all of a sudden, the mystery was done and the book wrapped up and it was like “what happened?” It just wrapped up too easily and too fast. But, I am definitely planning on reading the next installment to find out what case the main characters work on next.
It is sad to realize that the majority of the artwork stolen during Hitler’s Third Reich has never been found. I wonder if it is sitting in someone’s private museum, attic or maybe just buried and rotting somewhere. Or maybe some combination thereof.
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