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Medici Heist is exactly what you expect it to be from the title: it’s a heist story about a team of con artists who set out to steal a bundle from the uber-wealthy. And it’s set in Florence, Italy, in 1517, when the Medici family ruled the city. It’s a fun combination of genres: historical fiction and heist story.
Rosa Cellini was raised as a con woman by her mother. Now she’s 17 and has an ax to grind with the powerful and cruel Medicis. She sets her sight on the piles of gold the family has gathered from the people as indulgence money to the church. Well, more specifically, the pope. Pope Leo X is a member of the family and is just as corrupt as the rest of them.
Rosa first goes to Sarra the Tinkerer, whose father worked with Rosa’s mother when they were younger. Sarra has been perfecting her craft of creating various useful items to help relieve people of their belongings. She then goes to Khalid, a strong young man who has been compelled to act as bouncer, money collector and enforcer for a criminal who controls quite a large swath of Italy’s underground. Giacomo joins the team as a smooth-talking, clever master of disguises. The last two people to round out the group are an older apothecary and … Michelangelo. Yes, that Michelangelo, the famed artist whose work was sponsored by the Medicis.
Stealing from the well-guarded Medicis will take a miracle to pull off, but Rosa and her group think they can do it. Each person has something to prove, something to fix in their lives, and they desperately need this. Just how desperate some of their situations are shows up little by little in the course of the story.
I had fun with Medici Heist: I always enjoy a good heist/con story, and this delivered. It was also interesting to see how Schneiderhan fit a heist into this 500-year-old setting. She did pretty well. I had a few little quibbles with how smoothly some of it came together at the end, but it’s a great effort for a debut.
Rated: Moderate. Profanity includes about 25 instances of moderate profanity, about 45 uses of mild language, and 25 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content includes some kissing and some crude references. Violence includes descriptions of a past mass killing in a city, which included raping as well. There are a number of violent scenes, from fist fights to serious injuries involving knives, crossbows and bludgeoning with heavy objects.
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*I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
