The Emporia Gazette

May 27, 2012

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“Interred With Their Bones,” by Jennifer Lee Carrell, Dutton, 2007, $25.95.

If you enjoyed “The Da Vinci Code,” you will want to read this book. Jennifer Lee Carrell spins a tale of a lost Shakespeare play that sends her characters into unexpected places and through history searching for it. The book begins with the following quote from Shakespeare that is also a clue to the puzzle:

The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones. ...

But whose bones are we looking for?

Shakespeare scholar Kate Stanley is just about to debut as director of Hamlet at the rebuilt Globe theater in London. Just before dress rehearsal, her former and estranged mentor Rosalind Howard, Harvard Professor of Shakespeare, appears with a gift and a request for help. Reluctantly, Kate agrees to meet Roz after the dress rehearsal in a not-so-safe spot. Kate waits for Roz in the appointed place, but Roz does not appear. As Kate is waiting she sees a fire break out near where the Globe is located. She rushes to the Globe to find it burning, and later Roz’s body is found in Kate’s office. Kate opens Roz’s gift, and her search for the lost Shakespeare play and Shakespeare’s true identity begins. Sir Henry Lee, an august actor of the British stage, helps Kate evade the police and begin her quest.

Wherever Kate goes, people begin to die in ways staged to look like scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. Valuable early bound volumes of Shakespeare’s works also begin to disappear from the libraries and museums she visits on her quest. The search for the play seems to be tied to the academic controversy about Shakespeare’s true identity.

Roz’s nephew Ben shows up to help Kate, and a wealthy Shakespeare collector and benefactor named Athenaide wants to help too. When the killing doesn’t stop, and she herself is almost raped and killed, Kate begins to suspect everyone including Sir Henry and Ben. Kate’s quest takes her from Britain to the United States to Spain, back to Britain, to the American West, and through several centuries of history.

This one is truly a page turner. Check it out!