The Wonder Chamber

October 28, 2013
Malloy’s charming, if lightweight, third Lizzie Manning mystery (after 2011’s Paradise Walk) takes the St. Patrick’s College professor from Boston to Bologna, Italy, to catalogue and identify Renaissance artifacts belonging to the family of the college’s late principal benefactor, Prince Lorenzo Gonzaga, for St. Pat’s centenary exhibit. Lizzie finds the Gonzago palazzo chockablock with so much—everything from dried sea horses to Etruscan toy soldiers—it’s hard to decide what to tag for display. Meanwhile, she must contend with the patriarch, Lorenzo’s son Patrick—a crusty, dotty nonagenarian, who refuses to allow anything to be moved from its dusty place in the house. Excerpts from letters written by Lorenzo’s American wife, Maggie, point to sinister doings during WWII. Fans of Renaissance trivia will enjoy Malloy’s extensive expository passages, but mystery buffs will be disappointed with the book’s feeble obstacles, lax tension, and subpar conclusion.

November 15, 2013
A professor's dream assignment turns up some disturbing details. Lizzie Manning (Paradise Walk, 2011, etc.) has been assigned to arrange the centennial exhibition for St. Patrick's College. The college's founder was a wealthy Boston Irishman whose daughter, Maggie Kelliher, married Lorenzo Gonzaga, an Italian prince whose family has amassed a fantastic collection of everything from world-class art to stuffed alligators, much of it dating back to the Renaissance. When the family offers St. Patrick's whatever items they want from the family home in Bologna, Lizzie researches the college's collection of family papers and travels to Italy to make her choices. The only inhabitant of the house is the last of Maggie's children, the mentally unstable Patrizio, who segues from welcoming Lizzie to attacking her. His nephew Cosimo, who's financing the exhibit, has Patrick removed to a hospital, giving Lizzie the run of the house. With the help of the conservator Cosimo has hired to preserve, pack and ship the pieces, Lizzie soon makes difficult choices among the thousands of available items. But unexpected complications await her. While she's working, Lizzie reads Maggie's letters to her brother in Boston, which reveal much about the family's struggles during World War II, when the Nazis raped and murdered Maggie's daughter, a resistance fighter. When one of Lizzie's first choices, a mummy case sans mummy, is mistakenly sent along with the mummy included, it turns out to contain the body of a young woman shot in the head and mummified in modern times. Lizzie must solve this murder before all her hard work is ruined. History buffs fascinated by the wealth of historical information Lizzie unearths will forgive the long wait for the mystery to appear.

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Starred review from December 1, 2013

Boston-based academic historian Lizzie is assembling an exhibit for her employer, displaying historical artifacts belonging to the Italian American Gonzagas, a major donor's family. The project requires her to live in Bologna, Italy, consulting with family members and deciding which items can travel safely to the United States. Unfortunately the elderly family member who controls the items has dementia and is prone to accusative outbursts, making Lizzie feel very vulnerable. Nonetheless, she continues working and is stunned to find a corpse inside the exhibition's showcase item, an Egyptian sarcophagus. And the corpse is not mummified. Lizzie has been reading old letters that shed insight into the Gonzaga family's role during World War II, giving readers (and Lizzie) a good foreboding of the corpse's identity. Who killed her is murkier. VERDICT A professor herself (museum studies, Harvard Univ.), Malloy demonstrates a real flair for weaving an engrossing historical puzzle into her mystery plot. Carefully assembling her story, she gently reels us in. The author's third series entry (after Paradise Walk) is perfect for readers craving an elaborate scheme.

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