Word: olimpio
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...most reliable pre-election poll in Massachusetts may have been conducted with chocolate chip cookies. Vincent D'Olimpio Jr., a Hyannis baker, wrote the names of the gubernatorial candidates in icing on the cookies, allowing customers to buy their preference. Democrat Edward King had 295 cookie-buying supporters compared with Republican Frank Hatch's 287-close to the actual margin for King in the election...
Test Pilot. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, finally gratifying his long-felt urge to fly, ex-Aircraft Mechanic Olimpio Martines Neto, 27, hopped in a twin-engine DC-3 at the city airport, kept it aloft for three minutes, crash-landed in a crowded suburb, walked from the wreck with nothing more serious than a rip in the seat of his pants...
Beatrice was not beheaded for her affair with Olimpio, but for the murder of her wealthy father, Francesco. Just before, her stepmother's head had tumbled from the same block. And just after, her brother Giacomo, already tortured with red-hot pincers, had his head smashed with an iron hammer, his throat slit, and his body quartered. Lover Olimpio, who had actually polished off Francesco with the help of a hired assassin, was not there that day. He had been murdered not long before...
Revealing Rack. Lucrezia, his second wife, was running to fat, dull and fearful, a natural target for his abuse. Not Beatrice. As the papal prosecutor pieced it together, she decided to kill her father and persuaded mother Lucrezia and brother Giacomo to cooperate. Big, powerful Olimpio agreed to do the killing for his mistress and a messy job it was. The family explanation that Cenci had fallen to his death through a rickety balcony was too easily disproved, and even Pope Clement VIII refused to temper justice with mercy. Beatrice, Lucrezia and Giacomo all confessed, though modern justice might question...
Novelist Prokosch takes no sides, is almost astringent in telling the historic tale. His Beatrice is a cool customer, victimized by her father but with a calculating streak that makes her something less than lovable. Her affair with Olimpio is described not as a great love but as a product of tawdry circumstance that came in handy when she decided on murder. Most historical novelists would wallow in the Cenci story. Prokosch moves around it with the kind of detachment that makes it as believable as it is readable...