Chasing Shakespeares : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Not whodunit so much as "whowroteit"
Review: What do we read -- and what do we read into the books we love? These are the big questions facing Sarah Smith's two academic detectives, the blue-collar Joe and upperclass Posy, as they set out on a race to prove the authenticity of a Shakespeare letter that Joe has stumbled across in his research. The letter could change scholarship as we know it: it purports to be from the Avon-based player, and it seems to say that he didn't write the plays attributed to his name but that a nobleman borrowed his name. Joe, of course, wants the real working-man to be the plays' author, but Posy is leaning toward someone more of her own social standing, and both have good cases that draw them from Boston to England and into each others' arms. So -- did Shakespeare write the letter? Did he write the plays? Drawing on actual, ongoing literary debates, Smith creates a lively, contemporary mystery with two engaging characters who end up finding out as much about themselves as they do about the playwright they both love.