Octavo by Marty Neumeier

I’m going to start with the positives, because Octavo (or 8vo as it’s styled throughout the book itself), has plenty going for it. Unfortunately – and I think this is what makes it ultimately dissatisfying – the novel itself doesn’t seem to know what its strengths are…

At its heart – and the reason why I immediately requested an ARC – this novel contains a rip-roaring, swash-buckling historical detective novel, that places Leonardo da Vinci (the painter famous for such hits as The Da Vinci Code and other works) as a Renaissance Sherlock Holmes, with his mentee and protégé Count Francesco Melzi as his Dr Watson, patiently writing up their adventures for posterity. 

The mystery they solve is a pair of murders that take place in the North of Italy in the first decade of the 16th century.

A man is found crucified and with his head crushed on a printing press in Venice, with a verse from Dante imprinted on his smashed skull. Shortly after this, the consigliere of a lascivious lady aristocrat is found repeatedly stabbed to death just outside her castle, just as the finger of potential blame for the other murder has begun to swing towards her…

Da Vinci uses (what is essentially) prototype forensic science to perform autopsies, to create a photofit reconstruction of the head-crushed man, to analyse fabrics and fingerprints around the murder scenes, and then begins performing a series of persuasive and disgressive interrogations to find the perpetrators of these two crimes…

The reason why he’s personally invested in this is because the publisher who owned the printing press that was used as a murder weapon has been forced to shut up shop by the Venetian authorities until a perpetrator has been found, and that publisher had promised to print da Vinci’s notebooks, something the character is very keen to have happen.

Da Vinci discusses philosophy with his friends, he shows inventions (and ideas for inventions) that are hundreds of years ahead of their time, he travels from place to place and he uses wit, knowledge, intelligence and science-based gathering of evidence (though a huge amount of it does seem to be circumstantial) to create a firm hypothesis, which he manipulates into a confession from the guilty parties.

Although there are moments when this story doesn’t quite work (there are a couple of deductive leaps and discoveries that, though explained in the narrative and, crucially, correct, don’t have any basis at all in what’s been described), overall, it’s a fun, engaging and perfectly pleasant example of what it is: a cheeky piece of historical genre fiction that evidences both a solid amount of historical research and a playful choice to mess around with historical characters. 

The choice to use a first person perspective of the geeky apprentice doesn’t do the book any favours, though, as aside from a single evening of mushroom-induced hallucinations, Melzi is a very unexciting person. There’s no shagging, there’s no stabbing, there’s not much peril, and the premise is that these are Melzi’s later memoirs of the time when da Vinci solved some murders, so it isn’t in the present tense and there is an expectation of resolution from the off… However, Neumeier would have done better to remember that the best detective novels frequently have the detective in mortal danger, and that the most popular historical fictions are corset-ripping (or codpiece-ripping) shagathons of raunch, flesh and satisfaction.

It is fun, yes, but aside from the close descriptions of a couple of mutilated, murdered corpses, there isn’t much tittilation here, and a few more fight scenes (there is one, where da Vinci proves to be an adept martial artist, but to the point where there is no peril because he immediately defeats the bigger, more armed, men with real middle-aged ease), a couple of gratuitous bonking scenes (or more!), and this would have been a real winner. As it stands, this part of the novel is perfectly serviceable.

Good enough!

Fun!

I’d certainly return to the novel’s inevitable sequel (Neumeier is very clear to mention there were at least ten years between the events of this novel and da Vinci’s death), provided it doubled down on the Renaissance mystery action, and dropped the framing narrative…

I haven’t mentioned the framing narrative until now, because even a day after finishing the book, the memory of it still haunts me and I wish it didn’t.

The framing narrative is that two – seemingly underqualified – art/antique certifiers have found Melzi’s manuscript while going through a big stack of itemised antiques a Silicon Valley billionaire who’s interested in Transhumanism has agreed to buy from an Italian house clearance.

The manuscript – and a portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci by Melzi – have not been included on the itemised list, though presumably this is because they are the most valuable pieces and ones with meaningful historical import, so the absence is an intentional act to allow the original owners to sell them on the black market to the billionaire, rather than have them analysed and claimed by the Italian state.

The certifiers, instead guessing the items were just “missed off” the list, decide to steal them and run away.

They are chased across Italy by the transhumanist tech billionaire and his big hunky Jaws¹-type assistant, who are desperate to get hold of the manuscript for sinister collectory reasons.

They are able to follow the rogue certifiers closely because the two art certifiers (thieves?) are making a translation of the Melzi manuscript and sending excerpts of it as audio recordings mailed as email attachments to a man called Peter who works at a publisher, the same publisher as is credited on the spine of the book…

In the world of the novel, the publisher “Hacker” decides to publish a book it is receiving in irregular audio recordings, in spite of also believing a) the text should be in the public domain and b) that the manuscript is probably the legal property of a transhumanist tech billionaire, the person whose property he is buying and/or the Italian state.

The publisher begins funnelling cash (crypto) to the art certifiers as they pootle around the locales of the novel checking up on facts, cutting into their recording of the manuscript with pointless, patronising asides explaining things that have happened in the text, essentially functioning as an uncessary commentary on a genuinely enjoyable historical novel.

If Neumeier was so keen for readers to know that his Leonardo-da-Vinci-as-Sherlock-Holmes novel was the result of genuine research, he could have added a pleasant little afterword. Instead, what we have here is a framing narrative that is considerably more far-fetched than the historical novel where da Vinci invents forensic science to help a publisher he likes. 

In the framing narrative, the publishers are willing to spend vast sums on these (technically) thieves (though more Indiana Jones than the Nazis Indiana Jones is always racing) and on the legal protections they are already having to make due to undisclosed legal actions the transhumanist tech billionaire is bringing against them. He has, of course, used his tech to listen to all of the audio recordings.

I think that what has happened is that the book was originally written as a script for an audio play or podcast, and somewhere along the road the decision was made to turn it into a novel.

The framing narrative of audio files feels frankly bizarre, because what this means is that the novel (as presented in the world of the novel) contains transcriptions of a reading of a translation of a text. It is also fundamentally impossible to know anything about publishing in the 21st century and suspend disbelief at the premise of this framing narrative: there is absolutely no way that an early 16th century text in translation would be a blockbuster smash hit!

In my adulthood, two (if not three) Shakespeare composition attributions have been announced by academics. Both times when I heard that, I presumed that there would be mass fanfare, that there would be midnight bookstore openings ready to drop the “new” Shakespeare. In the end, yeah, absolutely no one gave a fuck. 

It’s nice to imagine, maybe, sure, that we might live in a world where Melzi’s memoirs about da Vinci might be popular enough to make mad bunse for a publisher and for the people who stole a copy of it from a person who was potentially trying to “steal” it from someone else… but we don’t!

That said, when the Melzi manuscript wraps up well over 50 pages before the end of Octavo, I immediately felt like giving up on literacy for life rather than read through a finale solely containing the framing narrative, but Neumeier does kick the action up a notch for that final section and I enjoyed it much more than I had previously in the book.

Though maybe that was more Stockholm Syndrome than anything else. Or was potentially just the sense of resignation, knowing that the historical detective story featuring Leonardo da Vinci was, alas, finally over, and these silly people and their silly adventures were no longer keeping me from the fun.

At its centre, at its heart, where it matters, there’s a very enjoyable novel here!

But wrapping it up is a story that is contrived, lacks meaningful depth and, in its final section, plonks in a series of “serious, literary” themes (childhood sexual abuse, mortality, cancer, racism) that arrive as unbidden, somewhat inappropriate, asides.

All of that said, though, a frothy detective novel about Leonardo da Vinci where the author’s bothered to do a nice amount of historical research is a fun thing! Is a good thing!

It’s fun enough, tbh, that I may well say that if you happen to stumble across a copy of this book, or if the eBook is available at a heady discount, those sections alone are well worth a go.

There’s some great stuff here! There really is! But it’s all the central story. Not the frame…

A disappointing read, yes, but with some very redeeming redeeming features.

Compelling, fun, but far from flawless…

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1. The James Bond one, not the shark one. ↩︎