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The Shakespeare Secret
By J. L. Carrell
Sphere Paperback Original £6.99
480 Pages
Dateline: 17th February, 2008
The Shakespeare Secret marries two very different genres and
is a book that should sell well to lovers of either.
It will inevitably provoke comparisons with The Da Vinci Code,
if for no other reason than because the publisher and blurb writers
are so keen to do so. You can see why, as that publishing and screen
phenomenon has been one of the most popular cultural offerings of the
last few years.
Everyone, with the exception of this reviewer, must have read the book
or seen the film. Sadly, the best that I can offer is enjoyment of the
cartoon - Leonardo-style rather than Tom and Jerry.
In this thriller, J. L. Carrell has sought to create a murder mystery
around the life of a man whose work is as famous but arguably today
not as popular as The Da Vinci Code, William Shakespeare.
As with Sir Tom Stoppard's script for Shakespeare in Love, this
five act novel sets its prologue in the Globe Theatre. However, where
that film saw it in its pomp as a home for romantic love, on this occasion,
it is in the process of burning to the ground.
Believe it or not, in Chapter 1 that 1613 conflagration is repeated,
391 years later. The second fire is the starting point of a rip-roaring
chase after a serial killer, led initially by a pair of amateur gumshoes.
They are Kate Stanley, a young American academic turned theatre director,
whose Globe Hamlet is delayed by the fire; and her Ghost, Sir
Henry Lee, a distinguished theatrical knight who was once a rent boy.
Along the way, the lady picks up other seekers after truth, a hunky
private eye named Ben, another American Shakespeare specialist, Matthew
and an unbelievably rich heiress and Bardic dabbler with the delightful
name of Athenaide, who lives in a recreated Elsinore.
It is not saying too much to announce that not all of Kate's fellow
travellers are what they seem. In a kind of globetrotting version of
Theatre of Blood, half a dozen murders take place, all modelled
on scenes from Shakespeare.
It takes until the final few pages to discover whether spunky Kate
eventually enters the grave following, ravished, in the footsteps of
Titus' tongueless and handless Lavinia or survives along with whichever
of her colleagues turned out to be on the side of the angels.
J. L. Carrell has set out to appeal to two markets. On one level, this
book is a load of tosh, a thriller that thrives, as the best of them
do, on coincidence and suspension of disbelief.
Not too far below the surface, but far enough away to avoid putting
off those who just want a good read, is a vast amount of information
about William Shakespeare and the lives of many of his contemporaries.
While the author may make some leaps of faith when chasing after missing
plays and lost folios, they are all grounded in a fair degree of fact.
Anybody who gets through the novel's 480 pages will by the end have
learned a great deal of valuable information about the Swan of Avon
without even noticing that they were doing so.
The Shakespeare Secret presents a series of mysteries within
its pages but there is another surrounding it. Who is J. L. Carrell?
With no biographical information in the book beyond a fuller name on
the copyright page, one can only surmise that the name might easily
be a pseudonym for a female, American Shakespeare scholar (or a team
containing one of these) with a penchant for thrillers but also the
ability to write a page turning novel that combines the sacred and the
profane.
Who knows? One day when she has become the next Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling
some amateur sleuth like Kate Stanley might track her down. When they
do so, she should be lauded for writing such an excellent novel and
forgiven either for educating those who didn't want to be or entertaining
those who were more interested in the literary history.
Philip Fisher
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