Interred With Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell

"The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones."

This quotation from William Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar evokes an anticipatory frisson in the reader who sees it on the flyleaf of Jennifer Lee Carrell's thrilling mystery, Interred With Their Bones. Find this book in our catalog.

Any reader willing to suspend disbelief and to embark with Shakespearean scholar and director Kate Stanley on a astonishing and gruelling quest to find a lost Shakespearean manuscript while simultaneously saving herself from a stalker will recognize that this quotation has become way more sinister and portentious than when Mark Anthony originally uttered it during his funeral oration for Caesar. Sure enough, it turns up as one of the clues to the whereabouts of documents and letters that will lead to the location of the lost manuscript, and might also unveil the secret of the true identity of William Shakespeare.

The book opens as Kate is directing rehearsals for a new production of Hamlet in the modern Globe Theatre in London. Reluctantly she allows herself to be interrupted by her former mentor, Rosalind Howard, from whom she has been estranged for years. Roz gives her a mysterious box, claiming to have made a groundbreaking discovery, and agreeing to meet Kate elsewhere that evening to explain all. Before Roz can reveal the secret to Kate, the Globe burns to the ground and Roz is found dead . . . murdered precisely in the manner of Hamlet’s father. Inside the box Kate finds the first piece in a Shakespearean puzzle, setting her on a high-stakes treasure hunt for the highly valuable manuscript.

As the trail unrolls, Kate is aided by a mysterious security operative, an august Shakespearean actor, a Harvard scholar, and an extravagantly rich grande dame who is a ruthless collector of Shakespeareana. Each one of Kate's confederates has a personal agenda to pursue, and we wonder just how far each one will go; for, as they travel from London to Harvard to the American West their path is littered with dead bodies killed in the manner of the most gruesome deaths in Shakespeare's plays. Who is the killer, and who is stalking Kate herself, whispering terrifyingly in her ear in the dark of the library stacks at night?

People who liked The Da Vinci Code will love this book: there are many tantalizing and ingeneous clues buried in hidden manuscripts, historic libraries, and personal papers. Readers will learn much Shakespearean lore and decifer arcane signs and symbols. There are many twists and turns, at least two mysteries intertwined, and tragic stories of love, conspiracy and death from long ago.

Readers who like this literary adventure may also like these:

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

In particular, you will enjoy The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber, which involves a distinguished Shakespearean scholar found tortured to death, a lost manuscript and its secrets buried for centuries, and an encrypted map that leads to incalculable wealth.

The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber

If you love books, you are going to love this entry into a relatively new genre – the literary thriller. It begins as Jake Mishkin, a New York intellectual property lawyer, son of a Jewish mobster, disappointed actor, Olympic weight-lifter, and rake about town is typing out his story as he waits in a remote cabin for his probable killers - a story that began with the discovery of some supposedly 17th century documents in some damaged rare books. Carolyn Rolly, a gorgeous and mysterious amateur bookbinder is helped in defrauding the bookshop owner of the documents by Albert Crosetti, a computer technician and film history buff. Their find is the 1642 letter of a certain Bracegirdle, a gunner mortally wounded in an English Civil War battle and writing to his wife so that she may tell their small son the story of his father’s life. The letter purports to reveal the existence of an hitherto unknown play by William Shakespeare. Along with the letter there are some other sheets written in cipher. Realizing that the letter alone will set the literary and academic world on its ear and is worth a countless amount of money, but that they cannot honestly claim ownership of it, Carolyn and Crosetti quickly sell the manuscript to a disgraced Shakespearean scholar. The deal is shady at the least. At the last moment Crosetti succeeds in making a copy of the letter and concealing the existence of the ciphered sheets. Both copy and sheets he keeps for himself. He hopes to decipher the sheets, which he supposes contain the actual location of the lost play. The actual play would be even more priceless than a document referring to it.

If you love books about codes and puzzles you will truly enjoy this book. There is a great deal of technical detail revealed as Crosetti, his mother, a retired librarian, and her friends try to break the cipher.

If you love thrillers and flights to and fro across the Atlantic to the capitals of Europe in private jets, you won’t be able to put this book down. Jake the lawyer gets involved when the Shakespeare scholar lodges the document with him for safekeeping. Very shortly after that the police inform Jake that his client has been tortured to death. Jake is also quickly visited by another mysterious and alluring girl who says she is the scholar’s heir, and by a terrifying Russian gangster who says he is the true owner of the document. Unfortunately, Jake has allowed the document to disappear with the girl, who appears to be a fraud. To save his reputation and his life Jake teams up with Crosetti to find the lost play. Their two accounts of what happens, together with the account of Bracegirdle’s life, add up to increase the complexity of the plot.

If you enjoy plot twists and doubling back you will more than appreciate this convoluted story. You will think you can see where things are leading; but you won’t know what is truly happening until the last page, and even then you may not be sure!