Scherzo

JACKET NOTES:  From Venice in the middle years of the 18th century comes a sparkling and labyrinthine murder mystery, mingling the serious and the frivolous in the truly outrageous spirit of rococo. How much of Scherzo is the truth, and how much an illusion? It is for you, gentle reader, to endeavour to find out...
Young Signor Ludovico, castrato opera singer, narrator and unlikely hero, begins his tale in the art-filled palazzo of his patron. Signor Morosini. But following the discovery of the body of a religious nobleman the descent soon begins towards the rancid canalsides inhabited by the Venetian underclass.
Together with a mysterious Frenchman (philosopher or charlatan - qui sait, cher lecreur?). Ludovico bravely sets forth to investigate the murder.
But in a world where the musings of Cicero rub shoulders with the contemporary revelations of Candide, and where the exploits of one Giacomno Casanova are even more exotic than the mysteries of Grand Lodge, a strange and sinister truth emerges.
For here the conundrum is not 'Who is the murderer?' hut 'Who is the detective?' Or. as Ludovico might put it (in Latin or in song): 'Exactly who is shafting whom?'
With consummate style. bawdy humour and the sharpest of wit, Jim Williams exposes the darker side of the greatest city of the Age of Enlightenment. SCHERZO is a teasing mystery and a literary tour de force.
(© Touchstone)