On New Year’s Eve 1899, Baltimore’s Chief Police Inspector Michael Esposito burst into a VIP celebration at the new Belvedere Hotel and prevented the assassination of do-gooder Charles Bonaparte, a top reformist of his day. History tells us that Bonaparte did live to help Teddy Roosevelt found the FBI. But the crime was never recorded in history.
Only the inspector’s great-grandson Nick Esposito says he knows about the assassin’s failed attempt and a subsequent murder that night at the yet unopened luxury hotel. He was there. Nick believes he was spirited back 100 years deliberately by hotel ghosts to witness the crime.
‘Night at the Belvedere’ takes you back to see and hear what Nick witnessed and why he was chosen to expose the frigid-cold case mystery. A century later, while attending a Millennium Eve party at the hotel on December 31, 1999, a delirious Nick wandered into a cleverly conceived masquerade ball where women in bustled gowns and businessmen in 19th century suit tails. At first, he believes the guests are all pretending to celebrating the business potential of the new hotel 100 years ago. But, at the present-day party all his wife and friends knew was that paranoid Nick Esposito went missing shortly after midnight.
Night at the Belvedere is an epic tale that revolves around Nick’s psychic and highly suspect paranormal experiences. As young Nick matures, he is tormented by his failure to achieve his own validity. You follow Nick through his identity struggles during dissociated life stages—brilliant history scholar, outsider, unorthodox public school teacher, closet alcoholic, Bohemian, and manic wild man. He cannot "belong" because of a habit of not letting down his walls. Instead, Nick is mired in fantasies from his love of history books.
By adolescence, bookworm Nick was already known as ‘the other Esposito’ because of his antisocial behavior, so unlike the happy-go-luck Esposito family of East Baltimore. Nick begins to go into trance-like states with flashbacks into favorite historical events. He discovers he can ‘visit’ the past almost at will, to walk through and observe earlier events. He is at the Annapolis docks watching a slave auction, at Gettysburg weeping at the sight of Pickett’s charge, with Poe writing a poem in his house in West Baltimore, and watching the horrible 1904 fire destroy downtown Baltimore.
Suspended until the last pages is whether Nick resolves his shaky mental state and finds a way to recover his lost identity. He must decide whether he was indeed spirited back to the 1899 event at the Belvedere to witness and document a long-unsolved murder case? Or, did his over-active imagination conjured up such a realistic vision from his vast knowledge of history?
Only the inspector’s great-grandson Nick Esposito says he knows about the assassin’s failed attempt and a subsequent murder that night at the yet unopened luxury hotel. He was there. Nick believes he was spirited back 100 years deliberately by hotel ghosts to witness the crime.
‘Night at the Belvedere’ takes you back to see and hear what Nick witnessed and why he was chosen to expose the frigid-cold case mystery. A century later, while attending a Millennium Eve party at the hotel on December 31, 1999, a delirious Nick wandered into a cleverly conceived masquerade ball where women in bustled gowns and businessmen in 19th century suit tails. At first, he believes the guests are all pretending to celebrating the business potential of the new hotel 100 years ago. But, at the present-day party all his wife and friends knew was that paranoid Nick Esposito went missing shortly after midnight.
Night at the Belvedere is an epic tale that revolves around Nick’s psychic and highly suspect paranormal experiences. As young Nick matures, he is tormented by his failure to achieve his own validity. You follow Nick through his identity struggles during dissociated life stages—brilliant history scholar, outsider, unorthodox public school teacher, closet alcoholic, Bohemian, and manic wild man. He cannot "belong" because of a habit of not letting down his walls. Instead, Nick is mired in fantasies from his love of history books.
By adolescence, bookworm Nick was already known as ‘the other Esposito’ because of his antisocial behavior, so unlike the happy-go-luck Esposito family of East Baltimore. Nick begins to go into trance-like states with flashbacks into favorite historical events. He discovers he can ‘visit’ the past almost at will, to walk through and observe earlier events. He is at the Annapolis docks watching a slave auction, at Gettysburg weeping at the sight of Pickett’s charge, with Poe writing a poem in his house in West Baltimore, and watching the horrible 1904 fire destroy downtown Baltimore.
Suspended until the last pages is whether Nick resolves his shaky mental state and finds a way to recover his lost identity. He must decide whether he was indeed spirited back to the 1899 event at the Belvedere to witness and document a long-unsolved murder case? Or, did his over-active imagination conjured up such a realistic vision from his vast knowledge of history?
