Bravo for the Bride

Billed as historical mystery, Eyre's latest tale of political and personal intrigue in medieval Italy is weak on both fronts. Melodramatic episodes in three duchies follow the strangling of a bad-tempered 15-year-old princess the day after her arranged marriage to a loutish prince. Assigned to find those responsible is hero-sleuth Sigismondo, a soldier of fortune with a shaved head and commanding presence, assisted by his servant, Benno, who successfully poses as a halfwit and carries in his jerkin a small woolly dog named Biondello. Sigismondo quickly becomes the target of a killer or killers, poses as an engineer to spy on and blow up a fort being built by a renegade duke, uses a slingshot to kill three brigands who attack another highborn lady and also rescues her from an abductor--and finally tracks down and duels the killer of the princess. This, the fourth Sigismondo caper (following Death of a Duchess), from England's Jill Staynes and Margaret Storey writing as Elizabeth Eyre, features a cast made up of too much caricature and too little depth. (Mar.)