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SHAKESPEARE NO MORE
by Tony Hays
Perseverence Press, September 2015
232 pages
$15.95
ISBN: 156474566X


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Called to Shakespeare's deathbed in Stratford-Upon-Avon, his lifelong friend Constable Simon Saddler is distressed by Shakespeare's claim that someone is poisoning him but passes it off as delirium caused by high fever. In a few days, Shakespeare is dead and his son-in-law, the physician John Hall who attended him, is persuaded to examine the body more closely -- the evidence of arsenic poisoning is ample and clear and Hall and Saddler are dismayed that they did not intervene when they might have.

In spite of his sure knowledge that Shakespeare bedded his own wife Peg, Saddler feels honor-bound both by his office and his former friendship to seek out those responsible and bring them before the law. Because much of Shakespeare's adult life was lived in London and not Stratford, and all of his important as well as dangerous contacts are there, Saddler sets out for London to follow as many threads as he can discover that can untangle the mystery of the murder. Possible enemies of Shakespeare lie in an impossible number of arenas from cuckolded husbands to criminally calculating noblemen to jealous poets and playwrights and to the king himself (James I) who is under constant threat from all sides.

Saddler is an intelligent and careful investigator -- going so far as to get written permission to investigate from Sir Walter Deveraux, sheriff of Warwickshire and his superior -- and his unswerving focus on finding the truth about who killed Shakespeare coupled with his basic honesty and confidence in his own abilities allow him to question everyone he finds of interest from cutthroats to commoners, clergy to nobility, and even to the king himself. Entering into an uneasy partnership with Ben Jonson, Saddler traverses both London and the English countryside gathering facts and insights while fending off the unknown persons who keep finding him and trying to kill him. Soon it is clear that a series of events and deaths are linked and that there are a number of powerful people who may be intent upon keeping their secrets at all costs.

This tightly plotted and fast-moving novel is laced with the names of those we all associate with William Shakespeare. Tony Hays is completely at his ease maneuvering his way through a time and place that most readers could not cope with and in such a way that those readers are able to see much of what Hays sees. This is a gifted researcher who is equally able to write -- those qualities do not regularly pair themselves up -- and I cannot recommend this wonderful work highly enough to those who love historical mysteries.

Already well-known for previous and highly praised successes with his Arthurian series, Hays' plunge into the Jacobean age is masterful. That Hays died this year, far too young at 58, is a difficult loss to accept.

§ Diana Borse is retired from teaching English at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and savoring the chance to read as much as she always wanted to.

Reviewed by Diana Borse, September 2015

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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