From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this ingenious literary thriller from Gruber (
The Witch's Boy), the lives of two men are changed forever by William Shakespeare and the letters of Richard Bracegirdle, a 16th-century English spy and soldier. Jake Mishkin, a Manhattan intellectual property attorney and a bit of a rake, goes on the run from Russian gangsters. Albert Crosetti, an aspiring filmmaker working for an antiquarian bookstore, finds that life is more exciting than movies—perhaps too exciting. Together, Mishkin and Crosetti travel to England in search of a previously unknown Shakespeare manuscript mentioned by Bracegirdle. Though the pace sometimes slows to allow Mishkin, Crosetti and Bracegirdle to divulge interesting aspects of their personal lives, these digressions only make the story more engaging. The suspense created around the double-crosses and triple-crosses works because of the close connection readers forge with Crosetti in particular. The mysterious murder of a Shakespearean scholar, shootouts in the streets of Queens and an unlikely romance all combine to make for a gripping, satisfying read.
(Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Codes 'n' classics have shown some staying power despite even the so-so prose of both the book that started the avalanche,
The Da Vinci Code, and its imitators. The plot summary of
The Book of Air and Shadows--ciphered seventeenth-century letters found in a rare book trigger a race to find an undiscovered Shakespeare play--might seem like yet another rubbing of the grail were it not for Gruber's intelligence and engaging style. This big bibliothriller stars a self-loathing, weightlifting intellectual-property lawyer; a timid wannabe film student; and a prickly bookbinder with a mysterious past, all marginally allied against untrustworthy scholars, Russian mobsters, and a mystery man. Though he ambitiously uses three different time lines and three points of view, Gruber deftly raises the thriller stakes and accelerates the plot while still creating convincing personal journeys for his characters. Even better, he finds time to thoughtfully explore related concepts, such as the ways movies inform our behavior and the nature of industries built to profit on creativity. All that and a tantalizing imagining of Shakespeare's personality, too. Try Ross King's
Ex-Libris (2001) and Jim Nisbet's
Syracuse Codex (2005) for two wildly different but related takes.
Keir GraffCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
