Chasing Shakespeares : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A fun, literate page-turner
Review: I read this book over the summer and loved it. The story was believable and kept me interested. The main characters were likeable and the author's way of approaching the rather "dry"/ academic subject of the Shakespeare authorship was well done and accessible. I didn't know much about the authorship controversy before reading this book, but I found the theories explored both easy to follow and ultimately intriguing. However, what I enjoyed most about this book was the way Sarah Smith depicted Boston and contemporary/ Elizabethan London, and allowed me to escape to these places in an instant.

Rating:
Summary: equalman review
Review: This book starts out very intriguing especially for those who are Shakespeare fans and also for Shakespeare neophytes. It's good for the neophytes because you can glean a lot of information in a palatable/fictional format as presented by Smith. The book gets a bit long and painfully detailed midway through. This novel would probably be a 2.5 if the content was edited down significantly. The ending did a poor job of wrapping up the characters and story line.

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.