Reading "A Play of Lords" by Margaret Frazer was a kind of pendulum-swinging experience. In the end I decided I liked it, yet as late as halfway through, I found myself thinking, “Oh, just get on with it!”

One reason was that the main thrust of the plot, as described in the book blurb, didn’t really materialize till perhaps the last third of the book. So it felt like the first half was still the setup that you go through to get the story going. Loooooong setup.

Not that it was uninteresting. Frazer is always great at giving you the real minutiae of life in England (in this case London) in the 16th century, so we saw a lot of what it was like to walk the streets and enter the dining halls of British lords and wealthy merchants. But I really wanted to get to the part where Joliffe was finally recruited as an informant by one of the lords!

To catch up a bit - this book is the fourth in Frazer’s newer series about Joliffe the Player, who has previously appeared in her Dame Frevisse mysteries and eventually warranted a book stream of his own. This, the fourth and most recent book in the series (but the first I’ve read), is the story where his life as a spy really begins, which was why I grabbed it as soon as I saw it. And that’s what I was waiting for, the whole first half.

I really like Joliffe, and it was interesting to see him in this story, a few years younger and greener than he was in the most recent Frevisse book, knowing how much wiser and more skilled he is to become. Once the intrigue really began in earnest, in the last third of this story, it became much more interesting. So it’s a shame it took so long.

Frazer tends sometimes to use a more archaic linguistic style, probably trying to get closer to the mode of the English of the day. I find this rather distracting and occasionally too ponderous. She also sometimes gives the impression of writing about the characters’ feelings and thoughts, rather than feeling and thinking those things along with them. So you often have a sensation of distance, even from the main character. I felt this was a drawback in this book, because I really wanted to be less distant from Joliffe. There was a bit more “telling” than “showing” in some spots.

But as I said, I quite enjoyed it by the end, despite those things. Now that the intrigue is about to begin in earnest, I’m quite looking forward to the next book about Joliffe’s adventures. ( )

A Play of Lords is the fourth book in the Joliffe series.This time the troupe of players are in London as part of the entourage of Lord Lovell, their patron. What seems to be a wonderful opportunity to try their wings in the greatest city in all of England is made less wonderful after Lord Lovell sends them to perform a particular plays for the Bishop Beaufort. Beaufort tasks them to write and perform a play for him and one doesn't refuse such a powerful man lightly. In no time though they can see that by doing so they've become embroiled in the political intrigues of the day because the Bishop is using their performances of the play and Joliffe's talents to further his own ends.The story was light on actual mystery and much heavier on the very complex politics of the period. This is the stuff that's leading up to the War of the Roses after all and we all know what a mess that was.The most important thing, though was that this was the pivotal moment in Joliffe's life, the major stepping stone in his evolution from mere player, as he was first introducted in "The Servant's Tale", to the spy/agent that he becomes later in life (read the Dame Frevisse series by the same author). ( )