Life Versus Art

The literary world is all a-buzz about the rediscovered manuscript of Harper Lee’s lost novel, Go Set a Watchman. It was found affixed to the back of the original To Kill A Mockingbird manuscript. It might have been kismet, but it was certainly a wonder.

At the same time, it‘s a case of life imitating art, because it brought to mind several fictional lost, found, forged or stolen manuscripts, some of which we have talked about here in the past. Not to diminish the importance of the exciting Harper Lee discovery, but the most sought-after manuscripts in the history of literature are those that can be ascribed to William Shakespeare.

The Bookman’s Tale, by Charlie Lovett (reviewed here by Sister Mary), is the story of a young man who loved two things in his life, books and his wife, Amanda. After her death, he travels to England and there discovers a book that might definitively prove that Shakespeare was, indeed, the author of all those plays.

Michael Gruber, in The Book of Air and Shadows, tells a complicated tale that begins in a rare-book bookstore in New York City, where aspiring filmmaker, Albert Crosetti, works. After finding a letter hinting at an undiscovered play by the most famous bard of all time, Albert and Jake Mishkin, a young intellectual property lawyer, are in a race to the death trying to reach the manuscript before the Russian mafia and certain gangsters. And all this for a playwright who may or may not have existed.

Try saying "pickpocketer’s pocket picked" three times. I could hardly type it. But that’s how A. G. Macdonell 's The Shakespeare Murders opens. Peter Kerrigan, a young con artist, man about town, and a jack of all trades does just that; he filches an already filched wallet and finds a clue to a million-dollar prize. Kerrigan follows an elusive scent to an English country house and a well-barricaded safe in a library, where a treasure purportedly from India is sequestered. Of course, the safe is empty, murder has been done and a Shakespeare manuscript plays a role.

Edgar Allan Poe definitely existed and a book of his is the central feature of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, by Gabrielle Zevin. A. J. is a depressed widower who owns one precious thing, a first edition of Tamerlane by Poe, who is considered to be the father of the mystery novel.

Fikry regards this manuscript as his treasure, in a manner very like Silas Marner, a lonely man who was in love with his gold coins. Then, again very like Marner, his treasure is stolen. But a little baby girl comes into his life and gives him a reason to live.

Joanne Dobson’s series featuring English Professor Karen Pelletier has a few plots involving manuscripts, because that’s what Karen’s métier is. But excitement comes her way when trouble walks in her door and a rare manuscript of the Dashiell Hammett’s Maltese Falcon apparently walks out. In The Maltese Manuscript, a real private eye joins Karen in her search for a book thief.

In The Raven and The Nightingale, manuscripts and journals by a 19th-century poet who was supposed to have thrown herself in the river for the love of Poe leads to more murder––which Pelletier must help solve, of course. This small series is a gem.

Lost manuscripts seems to be a hazard for English professor sleuths. In Diane Gilbert Madsen's A Cadger's Curse, Professor DD McGil is trying to authenticate a Scots manuscript––by Robert Burns, no less––while drinking scotch, and it is not a good blend.

Of course, the holy grail of lost manuscripts would have to be a lost gospel. Over the centuries, there have been perhaps as many as 20 gospels attributed to a variety of authors, including the Apostles Thomas, Peter and Judas, as well as Mary Magdalene and, more recently, a man known as Zacharias Rhetor.

The only one I am really familiar with is Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore. This is the fictional story of the missing years of Jesus, better known as Joshua, as told by his best pal, Levi, whose nickname was Biff.

Joshua wants to know more about his purpose here in earth, so he and his friend Biff make a journey to seek and find the three wise men who might be able to shed some light on things.

Voltaire said, "God is a comedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh". That might be true of this gospel.

What if You Just Can't Wait

So for the past several weeks we have been tempting and tantalizing readers with exciting new books soon to be published. These will be on the market shelves soon.

But it's a little bit like having a package sitting under the tree with a tag warning not to be opened until Christmas. What if we need something to read now? My way of coping includes a little pile of seasonal reads that are just the thing to put me into a festive spirit.

There are a few things that you can enjoy throughout the holiday season that help make up for the hustle of the holiday preparations and cut off the feelings of bah humbug that can creep up on the over-stressed.

One of my favorite––but slightly guilty––pleasures is eggnog. Every year, we wait for our favorite dairy to put out their version of smooth, creamy, sweet frothy goodness. This may not be on your diet, but there is a literary substitute and that is the heart-warming holiday stories written by Debbie Macomber. Macomber is an extremely prolific New York Times best-selling author whose novels embrace the best things in life: home, family, community and friendship laced with a soupçon of romance.

This year's offerings include Mr. Miracle. It's about an impractical relationship. Intrepid, headstrong Addie Folsom left home to follow a rainbow to a pot of gold in Montana. Like most pots of this sort, it was a mirage and Addie struggled to make a living without letting anyone at home realize how bad things had gotten.

When her father died, she thought she would come back to Tacoma, Washington to spend Christmas with her mom and to restart her college education. Like many plans, this one goes awry and fate has a double whammy in mind for Addie. Not only is her mother going on a longed-for cruise, but her next-door neighbor, Erich, has been in an accident that has broken both his arms––and some of his spirit. This is a disaster in many ways; I know someone this happened to.

As it happened, Erich had been a pest of a boy with a slightly malicious streak, and Addie would have rather have dealt him a backhand than lent him one. Now he is merely a curmudgeon who feels that Scrooge got a bum rap. But Addie has an angel on her side.

Voilá, all the ingredients for a heart-warming tale of the kind Macomber excels at. I have enjoyed her books in the past but my take on this one is––bah, humbug.

Maybe you like your eggnog with a jolt. Consider breaking out one of Anne Perry's annual Christmas treats. She includes betrayal, greed and murder with the warming of the cockles in the heart. This year, her tale takes place in a New York City that is still young, sparkling and full of life in 1904, but also still hiding menace around the corners. In A New York Christmas, Thomas Pitt's daughter, Jemima, is traveling with a friend across the north Atlantic. Her friend, Delphinia, is getting married in NYC to a scion of a fabulously rich and aristocratic family.

The snake in this particular garden is a Delphinia's mother, Maria, who mysteriously disappeared many years ago. For some very obscure reason, the family expects Maria to jump up like a jack-in-the-box and ruin the festivities. We have to leave it to Jemima with the help of a handsome New York cop to make things calm and bright.

Both of these writers have produced scads of these holiday stories, so if in either case one is not enough, there's plenty of backup to get you in the mood.

Fruitcake is another favorite that is mostly seen at this time of year. It is loved, hated or ignored and put aside until it hardens into a grand doorstop. I do get a kick out of those recipes calling for the freshest of ingredients. Is there such a thing as fresh dried and candied fruit? One important feature of all fruitcakes is the variety of textures and flavors.

The best literary comparison to this culinary extravaganza is Otto Penzler's collections of mystery stories. Penzler, who looks a little like Santa himself, is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, and each year for about 17 years, Penzler asked leading crime writers to pen an original Christmas story. These stories were reproduced in pamphlet form and given to the customers of the bookstore as a Christmas present. The stories were collected in Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop.

Some of the authors included are Lisa Atkinson, Lawrence Block, Mary Higgins Clark, and Ed McBain. The stories range from humorous to pure detection, and the anthology covers all aspects of the festive season. There are unscrupulous Santas, poisonous puddings, and deadly deeds, which combine to make luscious yuletide terror––just like fruitcake. I admit I really loved my mom's fruitcake, which was highly anticipated every year. That could have been because it had been doused in Cognac for weeks.

Penzler has a second collection that includes 60 of his all-time favorite Christmas crime stories. There are mysteries from Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Hardy, written long ago, and some written a century later by modern writers like Sara Paretsky. It is The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries. These are keeper books and they join Naughty: Nine Tales of Christmas Crime by Steve Hockensmith, in my Christmas reading basket year after year.

I have never had the opportunity to skim along the snow on a sleigh ride. The closest thing I ever came to it was in Chris Grabenstein's Slay Ride. It's about a young man, Scott Wilkinson, who hops into a car-service Lincoln expecting an enjoyable dash through the snow. But, in minutes, he's far from laughing, because his chauffeur drives like a maniac with menace on his mind. Scott gets home safely, but he opens Pandora's box when he decides to complain. He has no idea what events he has just set in motion because of his bell ringing. This story introduced Christopher Miller, aka "Saint Chris," an FBI legend, and he returns in another ride from Grabenstein in Hell for the Holidays.

Lastly, references to angels pop up a lot at this time of year. "Every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings" is how that memorable Christmas film It's a Wonderful Life ends. To get another perspective on angels you should try Christopher Moore's The Stupidest Angel. None other than the archangel Raziel has come to earth seeking a small child who needs a wish granted.

Little Joshua Barker desperately needs a holiday miracle. It's not that that he dying of cancer, or that he has a miserable life or even that he has lost his dog. It's worse. He had seen someone whack Santa Claus with a shovel and his wish is that Santa come back from the dead.

Raziel has lost his touch in the good works department, and before he's done, he has caused more than enough Christmas chaos and hilarity. This might be hard to forgive. Will he lose his wings? I was laughing enough that I had to dry my eyes to find out.

Many of my favorite authors have books that take place in December and occasionally incorporate the seasonal holidays. The best lists around of Christmas crime literature can be found on the blog Mystery Fanfare starting here: Christmas mysteries: Authors A-D

Review of Christopher Moore's The Serpent of Venice

The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore

I never know quite what to expect from author Christopher Moore, but this quirky laugh-out-loud farce is typical of his irreverent oeuvre. The Serpent of Venice is a bawdy mash-up of two of Shakespeare's plays, The Merchant of Venice and The Tragedy of Othello, with a dash of Edgar Allan Poe and an infatuated sea serpent thrown into the mix.

This is the second appearance of our protagonist, Pocket the Fool (after Fool: A Novel), with the puppet Jones and his trusty sidekicks, Drool and Jeff the Monkey. Pocket has been sent to Venice by his wife, Cordelia, the more-or-less accidental queen of England, to persuade the Doge not to go to war with Turkey. While he is there, Cordelia dies in London, presumably of disease, leaving Pocket in a very sticky situation.

A triumvirate of powerful men in Venice wants Pocket dead, by any means possible. The Doge favors Pocket, whose interests are inimical to their greedy plans, and Pocket has boasted of seducing Portia, the Senator's second daughter (his first had run away with that Moor, Othello.) Senator Montressor Brabantio, Iago the soldier, and Antonio the merchant lure Pocket to the Brabantio's house with the promise of a new cask of Amontillado wine to taste. The other two conspirators help Brabantio chain Pocket in the dungeon and leave. The Senator uses long-forgotten skills to brick up the entrance, jeering all the while that Cordelia had been slowly poisoned by his hawkish cabal.

"'What are you doing?'

'Walling you up in the dungeon.'

'No you're not.'

'Yes I am. Go join your queen, fool.'

'For the love of god, Montressor!'"

Anyone familiar with Poe's creepy story The Cask of Amontillado will surely remember that despairing cry.

After several days in the dark dungeon, a female sea serpent/mermaid not averse to intimate inter-species relations begins to visit Pocket, mauling him lovingly and bringing him dead fish to eat. The smitten serpent finally pulls his chains out of the wall and deposits Pocket in front of Shylock's house on the Jews' Isle. Shylock's daughter Jessica has always wanted a slave, but Jewish law forbids it. Pocket narrowly escapes a bris at her inexperienced hands, but agrees to become Shylock's uncircumcised employee.

The Immortal Bard himself was a master of innuendo and double entendre, and his work is full of sexy puns. Did you know that any passage that contains both a lady and a glove is likely a reference to sex? Both gloves and condoms of the period were made of lambskin. Almost any cut of meat mentioned in Shakespeare has a double meaning; haunches, rumps, loins, sausages. Fruit too, especially pears. Elizabethan audiences loved their raunchy humor and Shakespeare loved to give it to them.

There is much ado about codpieces in this book; sometimes it was more reminiscent of a sophomore boys' locker room than anything else. I had never really thought about codpieces being sized, but Pocket is presented––at least by himself––as the smallest man with the biggest codpiece in most gatherings.

Moore's one-man invasion of classical literature managed to confuse me about the characters thoroughly––it has been many years since I read or saw either of these plays performed. Portia, a character from Merchant, appears here as the younger sister of Desdemona, who was married to Othello. When their father, Senator Brabantio, dies of a heart attack after walling Pocket in the dungeon, Othello the Moor, as husband of Desdemona, inherits by default his seat on the powerful Council. There is a Chorus, which at one point argues with Pocket. While I appreciate Moore's modifications of the outcomes for Othello, Desdemona, and Shylock, I'll have to reread synopses of both plays to get the characters and stories straight again. And the puppet Jones has all the best lines!

Note: I was given a free review copy of The Serpent of Venice, which will be published by William Morrow on April 22, 2014.