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3.12 AVERAGE
3.12 AVERAGE
Great storyteller. Great literary mystery involving a lost Shakespeare manuscript and the people who are trying to find it. The searchers range from a mysterious woman who is an expert bookbinder to an old-school Jewish mobster.
I really wanted to give this one a chance, but it was so bogged down in meaningless details that very little happened within the first 100 pages. The style of writing is very meandering, so much that it detracts from the plot. Which is a shame, because the premise of the book sounded very interesting, but in the end it was just too dull for me to be able to get through. For me, it spent way too much time dwelling on the family of the characters rather than establishing a plot.
The "twist" at the end was clumsily laid before the reader with no lead-up. Despite an interesting premise, this thriller failed to really live up to its grandiose ideas. A bookseller believes he has found letters which will lead to an unknown Shakespeare play about Mary Queen of Scots. His story is told in the third person, while the story of a copyright lawyer who initially advises a lit professor about potential legal issues in this manuscript is told in first person. This, coupled with the fact that the lawyer's story begins before the bookseller's (so that the two timelines are not in sync and the letter is produced to the lawyer before it's technically been discovered) should have deterred me from reading it all the way through. However, like some silly vampire novels, this work was somehow compelling, and I finished it. If you are an avid reader, a lover of Shakespeare, or enjoy a great thriller, leave this and read something by a master of suspense (and compared to this author, that would include Dan Brown). I apologize if my attempt at a brief synopsis was confusing; it rather mirrors the novel, itself.
Fun summer read but not exactly what I was looking for. Perhaps more my fault than the author's.
this was a better researched di vinci code. a little long but i loved the treasure hunt and the detail about book making.
I overall enjoyed this book as it was crime novel with a historical twist with the characters pursuing the "treasure" a purported lost original play by William Shakespeare. I enjoyed how the author began by moving the story along by following one of our main characters in turns and then interspersed these with translated text from our treasure map, aka letters between two historical figures that hopefully in the end will provide the x for the map. The translated text was a bit harder to read through as it was written more in line with Shakespearean English. The author had the expected twist and turns as you progressed through the book but even when you thought you had solved it there were still a couple of more surprises in store. I also appreciated that the supporting female characters were not merely arm candy but also had substance and sometimes with a bit more backbone then the main male characters.
Some of the reviews complained that this was too character driven without much plot. I love character-driven novels so this was fine with me and I loved the plot and the mystery it involved too. I met some characters in this novel that were a fresh change for me, perhaps because the author is male and not afraid to write as such. This book would appeal to a male just as well as female audience.
What a slog. Nothing really happens until after 100 pages in, and I can’t say it was worth it. This ain’t even going back on the shelf.
Just was not grabbed by this book. The description made it sound interesting, but after the first chapter I was still not very interested in the plot, the characters, or the story itself. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood, but I didn't see the point in forcing myself to finish the book, just because I got it out of the library on Interlibrary Loan.