Bullets for Macbeth

The impetus for this semi-boiled detective story was the author's solution to the "Third Murderer" problem in Macbeth. The literary mystery is clever and quite convincing; the murder case rather less so.

I give this book three stars because I would recommend it, for fun, to any fan of Shakespeare. That part of the book was very interesting. The mystery, not so much. I'm not really sure the author played fair. It didn't feel like it. Also, though the conversations between characters tried to be lively, they mostly weren't. The two main characters just fell flat for me. Written in the 1970s, it includes all the gritty details of people's sexual lives, though I admit, without explicitness, which is why I pretty much avoid mysteries from the 60s and 70s. Still, I feel it was worth the read because of the clever things about the play Macbeth. It may have helped that I had just read Macbeth and am a complete novice to all the arguments about show more it, but in reading it through, I had spotted all the snags about the 3rd murderer and Hecate, etc. For that reason, I enjoyed this story, though I would be selective in recommending it. show less