Thirteenth Night

It has been a long time since I read Twelfth Night but this brought back a lot of the fun I remember in Shakespeare's play. This book is set many years later, Viola's husband is dead and Feste is heading out to find out what happened. Did he commit suicide? Was it an accident? Or, was it foul play.

Loved the whole story, it was fun and well plotted and had a couple of twists that I never saw coming. Even if you haven't read or seen the play you will enjoy this book, it gives enough of the original background to keep the flavor of the original but doesn't spend so much time in the past to make the story bog down.

I believe I will be trying the next in the series.

A pleasant and fast-moving mystery, following up on Twelfth Night a little over a decade later.

As a piece of meta-Shakespeariana, the book is slight: Graham isn't interested, for example, in playing games with Shakespearian structure, and his projections of what the characters would have become years later has some clever bits but is not meant to be an exercise in Bradleian criticism.

The author's principal trick is to redate the period - Shakespeare depicted a roughly contemporary society, though there are few markers as to time - to the late 12th / early 13th Century (the Fourth Crusade is in preparation) and create a transnational secret society of fools of which the fool that was Feste was a secret agent, and to Malvolio a Saracen show more agent.

Gordon does a decent job with the historical side, although a few details are jarring - the term Gothic was not used for the architecture of the period until the Renaissance, for example. As a mystery novel it is successful (and was successful enough to lead to a string of non-Shakespearian sequels). show less

Gordon imagines Feste, the fool from Shakespeare's [b:Twelfth Night|1615108|Twelfth Night or, What You Will - Literary Touchstone Classic|William Shakespeare|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1185912226s/1615108.jpg|3267921], as a member of an elite guild of fools who, like the Illuminati (but much more amusing) influence European politics and, in this case, investigate a murder. Gordon's wordplay is quick and references Shakespeare's without interfering unduly with flow of the story. The plot is slightly convoluted, reminding me that if I were ever to murder someone, I would do better to strike quickly (as, Voldemort: "Kill the spare") than to prioritize exacting an imagined sweet revenge by means of twists, artifices, and a lengthy show more soliloquy to the victim re: why I delight in doing what I am about to do. This is the undoing of many nemeses of Bond, as well as Sideshow Bob, and the murderer here does not transcend its narcissistic lure. show less

I liked this but I didn't like the ending. It was very interesting from the history side. He writes well. It held my attention because of the red herrings and I didn't know until the end who was up to what. that's the bottom line in a mystery: not knowing who dunnit until the very end and having it make sense. so I gave it 4 stars.

Smart, learned, with nods to stagecraft and swimming in history. I like it a lot.

Fun read! Different premise than anything I've run across before. Wonderful atmosphere without overdoing the descriptions.

Alan Gordon continues the story that William Shakespeare began in Twelfth Night. The Duke of Orsino has died under mysterious circumstances and Malvolio, believed an agent for some other power, is thought to be at work again. In response, Feste the Fool is called into service to investigate. For, as it turns out, the Fools' Guild is actually a cover for an international organization of operatives dedicated to preserving balance in Europe and the Middle East and acting as a counterweight to the Catholic Church.

A friend recommended this one to me based upon my enjoyment of medieval mysteries but I fear we must agree to disagree on this one. The dialog bothered me from the beginning, too glib and anachronistic for my taste. As the story show more progressed, the situations just seemed too contrived and the characters a little too slick.

I gave it 60 pages and stopped. show less