Interrupted Aria (Tito Amato Mysteries, 1)

Venice, 1731. Opera is the popular entertainment of the day. Tito Amato, mutilated as a boy to preserve his enchanting soprano voice, returns to the city of his birth with his friend Felice, a singer whose voice has failed.

Disaster strikes Tito’s opera premiere when one beloved friend is poisoned and another unjustly accused and arrested. Alarmed that the merchant-aristocrat who owns the theatre is pressing the authorities to close the case, Tito races the executioner to find the real killer. The possible suspects include the cast of one of his operas: a libertine nobleman and his spurned wife, a jealous soprano, an ambitious composer, and a patrician family bent on the theatre’s ruin. With Carnival gaiety swirling and Venetian passions to an ominous crescendo, Tito finds astonishing secrets lurking behind the masks of his own family and friends.

“Myers’ absorbing first novel… recreates the opera seria of the time in fascinating detail.” — Publishers Weekly