Thursday, January 15, 2009

Shakespeare's Lost Manuscript

The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber

This story begins with a fire in a rare book store. When one of the workers opens up the bindings of an old novel in order to salvage the pieces, they find in the binding some old letters. These letters tell about spying on William Shakespeare with a plot to ruin him. Amidst these letters there is discussion of an unknown and lost play which deals with the turmoil between Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth. The novel is the story of hunting for this manuscript with mafia and corrupt book dealers on their tail with murders and kidnappings popping up all over the place. This story has two narrators; one is an intellectual property lawyer who is cynical and very witty who speaks directly to the reader in a very unique tone; and the other is a young man who is an aspiring film maker and so everything from him has the undertones of a film (i.e. This can’t be the end because we haven’t had a twist in the plot yet, etc.) This book was a happy find for me and I hope it will be for others too!

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