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Summary
Summary
Night after night, a ghost appears in the royal castle Pergamontio, terrifying the princess. Mangus the Magician doesn't believe in ghosts, but that doesn't stop him from being charged with finding this one. The King demands that Mangus free his daughter from the torment of the ghost...otherwise, the magician will pay with his life. Mangus's only hope is his faithful, street-smart servant boy, Fabrizio, who must solve the mystery of the ghost using logic and reason - and a bit of magic of his own.
Author Notes
Avi was born in 1937, in the city of New York and raised in Brooklyn. He began his writing career as a playwright, and didn't start writing childrens books until he had kids of his own.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-9-Avi takes readers to 15th-century Italy in this entertaining tale of mystery and intrigue. Twelve-year-old Fabrizio is the servant of Mangus the Magician. When the king's daughter claims to have seen a ghost, the magician and the boy are summoned to the castle. The evil Count Scarazoni wants to prove the ghost is not real so that his wedding to the princess will not be postponed. Young Fabrizio uses trickery, recklessness, and bravado to ferret out clues, spying in castle halls and secret passages. His master, meanwhile, relies on pure reason to reach the truth. Between the two of them, they are able to unveil a web of plots and deceptions, and then find a way to thwart the count and save their own skins. The quick pace and several plot twists will keep readers turning pages. The mystery will keep them guessing, but it never becomes too complicated to follow. Fabrizio makes an appealing hero. His cleverness is often outdone by the schemes of others involved, but his courage and curiosity make up the difference. The boy often injects witty aphorisms into his conversation, and his enthusiasm and energy contrast entertainingly with the calm wisdom of his master. The villainous count is less fully drawn, as is the king, but the queen and the princess develop entertainingly as the story progresses. Most of the tale takes place within the "castello," and descriptions of the dark hallways, hidden staircases, and gloomy dungeon make a delightfully atmospheric setting for this historical mystery.-Steven Engelfried, Deschutes County Library, Bend, OR (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Taut and suspenseful, this vivid mystery set in an imaginary kingdom of Renaissance Italy is vintage Avi. The story starts with a bang as an unmarked coach arrives one stormy night at the home of Mangus the magician, who is under house arrest for his knowledge of the dark arts. Mangus, as readers quickly learn, is no wizard but a former entertainer, and he in fact scoffs at the notion of magic. He protests vigorously when he is summoned to the castle (along with his 12-year-old servant, Fabrizio) and ordered to help free the princess from her visions of a terrifying ghost. All is not as it seems, however, as the pair discover a court intrigue involving a missing prince, a murder, hidden passageways and the king's Machiavellian adviser, Count Scarazoni. Weaving in the age-old clash between superstition and reason, Avi creates a sort of 15th-century Holmes and Watson in the characters of Mangus and Fabrizio, who continually trade aphorisms (" `Fabrizio, if you buy with ignorance, you will be paid with the same coin.' `But, Master, you know what people say, False gold often buys more than iron' "). With snappy dialogue, nonstop action and lavishly embroidered period backdrops, this will please Avi's fans and may well win over some new ones. Ages 10-14. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate) What better place for some midnight magic than a dank, medieval castle replete with hidden doorways, secret passages, and a daunting spiral staircase? In the summer of 1491 a servant boy named Fabrizio and his master, a retired magician, are urgently summoned to this castello in the Italian kingdom of Pergamontio. Young Princess Teresina has witnessed a frightening apparition, which she claims is the ghost of her murdered brother. While Mangus the Magician attempts to solve the mystery through reason and deduction, his twelve-year-old servant roams the castle halls, where he eventually sees the ghost himself. Fabrizio, who is not above using a little sleight-of-hand to secure an advantage, befriends Teresina and learns that the ten-year-old princess will soon be betrothed to her father's adviser, Count Scarazoni. Although Teresina shows Fabrizio the secret chambers of the castle, she does not share all the secrets she knows. Indeed, most of the characters in the novel withhold information from one another, and Fabrizio is left in the dark-both literally and figuratively-when, at the book's climax, he must race through the castle's pitch-black corridors and help Mangus conjure up an illusion that may save the monarchy. Readers who can get past the misleadingly romantic cover illustration will discover an old-fashioned story that emphasizes plot over characterization. Brave orphan boys, feisty princesses, and villainous royal advisers are all familiar, timeworn roles, and the characters never emerge as unique individuals here-a flaw further magnified by their arch, often melodramatic dialogue. However, Avi uses some literary sleight-of-hand to make the pages fly with intrigue and action. peter d. sieruta (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Conspiracies, intrigue, murder, deceit, apparitions, dusty secret passages, false identities, a clever investigator, and his loyal if credulous young servant: Avi's new page-turner has it all. Not long after scholarly old Mangus is forced into renouncing magical powers he never claimed to possess, he is abruptly summoned to the nearby Castello Pergamontio; it seems that Princess Teresina, 10, claims to have seen a ghost. His servant and narrator, Fabrizio, soon discovers that the situation is far from cut-and-dried; the heir, Prince Lorenzo, is gone, perhaps murdered, and the princess is about to be secretly married to sinister Count Scarazoni'unless the superstitious King Claudio calls the wedding off. Mangus, who doesn't believe in the supernatural, says the ghost is not real, but Fabrizio has no doubt after seeing a gesticulating, weirdly lit figure. Then Teresina's tutor is found dead. Enmeshing his protagonist in webs of conflicting plots and alliances, Avi brings the suspenseful plot to a climactic boil in which Scarazoni is tricked into confessing that he killed both the tutor and the prince'or tried to, as Lorenzo has been around the whole time, disguised as a kitchen boy. Readers, especially fans of John Bellairs's books, will be riveted from page one. (Fiction. 11-13)
Booklist Review
Gr. 5^-8. Avi continues to write across genres, this time offering a medieval mystery that will keep readers guessing to the very end. Fabrizio, the servant boy of the magician Mangus, gets embroiled in palace intrigue when Mangus is called to the castle to ascertain whether 10-year-old Princess Teresina has truly seen a ghost as she claims. Count Scarazoni, the king's closest advisor and Teresina's intended, wants the ghost to be a fiction. Teresina wants the king and others to believe that the ghost is that of her missing brother. Both the unwilling Mangus and the meddling Fabrizio become entangled in a conspiracy that could lead to their deaths. Avi provides as many twists and turns as there are secret corridors and hidden rooms in Teresina's massive palace. Most of the time these bends in the plot heighten the tension, once even providing some heart-stopping action. However, especially at the book's conclusion, some of the explanations of previous actions get a bit convoluted, and kids may have to read the ending more than once before everything makes sense. They may not mind too much, though, because the combination of magic and mystery is pretty irresistible. --Ilene Cooper