Prince of Foxes

Garden City, Ny: Sun Dial Press, 1948. 433 p. 21 cm. Includes Maps.. Very Good/Good. Little, Brown & Company, Boston, 1948. Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket. Good. Gray Cloth with red titles on the spine. Minor wear to book, clean and unmarked except for an inscription on the inside blank page. Endpapers illustrated with red maps. Dust jacket chipped and torn along the edges. 433 Pages. ABEEE Synopsis: This novel was first published in 1947. It's still in print – or at any rate was reprinted by Bridge Works in 2002, and probably again since. There are reasons for that. First, it has all the characteristics of a rip-snortingly readable, fast-moving historical pulp adventure. Next, it has a great cast of characters. Last, it is even quality writing! It's set in Renaissance Italy, circa 1500, the time of Cesare Borgia. The main character is charming and mysterious Andrea, a Renaissance man to the core, artist, soldier, diplomat, and agent of the chilling Cesare, but with a hidden past and, as the instrument designer Lorenzo says of him in the first chapter, "too many faces." Before starting the novel, Shellabarger read reams of the literature, records, and documents from the actual times. The language of diplomacy and social manners, then even more than now, was unctuous, extravagant and phony. No flattery was too extreme, no lie too low, no promise too hollow. Shellabarger captures it exactly. His fictional Andrea is a master. Still, being intelligent and complex, Andrea is not immune to the attractions of honest, decent dealing, especially towards people he admires. Even very minor characters, who appear once or twice and never again, are well drawn and convincing, like the designer of musical instruments, Lorenzo, and the magistrate of Viterbo, whom Andrea neatly manipulates. (A notable and jarring exception is the blackamoor child-servant, Seraph, depicted as nothing more than a grinning, eye-rolling darkie. Ouch. True, Seraph IS a child, but still it's one aspect of the book that does not transcend its 1947 date.) If you like suave, lethal intrigue, there is loads of it. If you like battles, there are those too. If you like smooth duels of wits with life or death as the stakes, PRINCE OF FOXES abounds in them. There is memorable single combat, too, between Andrea and Pierre Terrail du Bayard, the most famous chevalier of France. ("Without Fear and Without Reproach"? Yes. THAT Bayard.) On that occasion, Andrea fights the duel to save his henchman, Mario Belli, from being lynched by a group of French nobles for treason against their king, of which he's flagrantly guilty. (His real name is Marius de Montbel.) Andrea and Belli originally met when Belli tried to murder him, hired by a Ferrarese ambassador. The attempt failed, due to Andrea's prowess, and when Belli revealed who hired him, Andrea feigned appalled shock. ABEEE