A Brood of Vipers

Sir Roger Shallot's ``fourth journal'' (the third was The Grail Murders) reveals a veritable Titus Andronicus of savagery: duels; beatings; suicide; plots within plots; and murders--lots of them. But it's hardly tragedy, as Shallot, Knight of the Garter, four-time widower, cheater at dice and earthy-tongued libertine (who claims to have sired a son by the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I), tells it all with garrulous, sometimes scatological, gusto. He recalls the spring of 1523, when he, then a mere servant, traveled with his beloved master, Benjamin Daunbey (nephew of Cardinal Wolsey and agent of Henry VIII), to Italy to investigate the London murder of a Florentine envoy. Staying at the villa of the powerful Abrizzi family, they see plenty of action while drinking in the lively but treacherous Florentine milieu of Machiavelli and the Medicis. The mystery, which has to do with the scheming that led to Henry's break from Rome, is merely workmanlike. It doesn't really matter a bit. The pleasures of this series are not to be found in plotting but in Shallot's Falstaffian narrative flair. (Jan.)