In 1593, Christopher Marlowe uncovers a scandal that could be the end of Elizabeth I's ambitious counselor Robert Cecil. In the present day, Renaissance scholar/private investigator Kate Morgan is drawn into a case involving a coded manuscript that may help solve the mystery of Marlowe's murder once and for all. There's also a second case that unexpectedly involves Kate's personal life.
My thoughts
I first read this shortly after it came out in 2004 and wanted to be Kate Morgan. I've always loved mysteries and I really love historical fiction, but thrillers were totally new to me. It's an ambitious book and I remember enjoying the novelty of having a contemporary mystery intertwined with a centuries-old mystery. Both parts are entertaining, but they never quite mesh and I found the constant shifts from one to the other jarring.
On this read-through, I enjoyed the contemporary portion of the plot the most. Kate's main case involves a coded Elizabethan manuscript, a dead would-be thief, a murdered professor, and a suave businessman. It crackles with action—disguises, knifings, etc. Marlowe's interwoven story is skillfully written and also chock full of action. There's one superb twist that I didn't see coming—and it even surprised me on this second reading.
Back in the present day, Kate's second case gets relegated to the background, but it is in many ways the most interesting part of the book. It involves an intelligence officer recently sprung from an Iranian prison (and, as you might imagine, in horrifyingly bad shape). It could have been the entire plot of a book on its own and in many ways it's a shame it wasn't. It doesn't get enough attention, isn't fully developed, and isn't fully resolved by the end of the book.
There's a lot going on in this book, so there are a lot of characters to keep track of. Fortunately, they all have distinct personalities and it was easy for me to remember who was who. It's a skill I didn't fully appreciate until this weekend, which brings me to ...
I finally got around to watching Anonymous this weekend. I was really excited when I first heard about it but decided not to see it in theaters when it got panned by the critics. I have to say, the critical vitriol was totally warranted. The story spans 40 years and jumps back and forth between the two startlingly often. I struggled to keep the characters and events straight because there's just too much going on. The plot revolves around the premise that the Earl of Oxford authored all of the plays we attribute to Shakespeare and that Shakespeare himself was an illiterate actor. (I actually adored Rafe Spall's Shakespeare. He's utterly blasphemous but irresistibly, deliciously hammy.) Anonymous and The Intelligencer shared a few commonalities—Cecil makes a convenient villain and Elizabeth is anything but virginal. And Marlowe pops up long enough to threaten to expose Shakespeare as a fraud and get killed for it. But I spent a good chunk of the movie going, "wait, what?"—there's just too much crammed into it.
Bottom line
The Intelligencer: good page-turner. Anonymous: unwieldy blockbuster where things blow up simply because Roland Emmerich directed it. (Seriously, you want explosions? Adapt the mystery of Mary Queen of Scots and the murder of Lord Darnley for the big screen. Bonus points for gratuitous extraterrestrials.)
Fine print
The Intelligencer, by Leslie Silbert
Genre: mystery, historical fiction, thriller
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library
No comments:
Post a Comment