The Murders of Richard III (1974)

Image result for richard iii"


Jake Kirby #2

Just like I'm hooked on you, Jake.

Jake Kirby, academic librarian currently on holiday in England, gets dragged by a friend to a traditional country house where an amateur historian is holding a conference on Richard III before purportedly revealing a long-lost document that will reveal the maligned king's innocence. Skeptical, Jake nonetheless soon finds herself pulled into the undercurrents of the group, in which all the old fifteenth century conflicts seem reborn, if on a milder scale. As someone starts playing nasty pranks that reenact famous violent murders of that century, she starts sprinting for a solution before the pranks turn deadly.

Confession--I did my doctoral degree on fifteenth century political machinations, including of those mad old, bad old Richard III. So this book always makes me furrow my brow a little a bit.

As mid-seventies scholarship of the tangled affairs and murders and backstabbings of the Yorkist clan, it's just passable. But I forbid you to read this for the casual pro-Ricardian attitude. Read it for Jake Kirby, sauntering delightedly through a spoof on a typical English manor house mystery...albeit a confusing one, with what feels like a thousand extraneous characters, all pretending to be a character from the last years of the York court. It's exhausting trying to keep track of them and their dual identities.

Luckily, watching Jake do her thing is far more entertaining than trying to differentiate between the vicar and doctor in any scene, and which one is meant to Edward IV. And there's plenty of things for her to do. She's growing progressively more eccentric (that purse! Those clothes!), although hers is still not the narrating voice. Instead, she gets an amiable if dim Watson in the form of her old friend (and would-be wooer) Thomas Carter. There's also a handsome anti-Ricardian she leads on a merry dance, even as she stalks the prankster. And while she ends the novel by going on vacation with him, the strong implication is that it purely to torment him for the condescension he's treated her with throughout.

Interestingly, the attitude of the pro-Ricardians is pretty spot on--MPM catches that intense, almost all-absorbing hero-worship of some of them quite well...and quite timelessly.

Favorite Line: "Thomas, do you realize what this is? It's an English house party, darling, straight out of all those British detective stories I revel in. These people are classic characters. They couldn't be better if you had invented them."


Rating: ***

Notes:
*Don't forget to read The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, which MPM mentions several times as a classic pro-Ricardian novel. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Dead Sea Cipher (1970)

Image
Listening: Let It Be When Dinah van der Lyn agrees to take a trip through Palestine and Israel in the place of her wheelchair-bound, Biblical scholar father, she thinks it's just a nice prelude to her first operatic role in Germany. But then a scream rends the night at her hotel, and she seems to be the only to have heard it. And when a smooth-talking spy and a fierce archaeologist start dogging her footsteps, it becomes obvious she's become part of something much bigger than a mere tourist trip through the Holy Land. International espionage sweeps her forward on an irresistible tide of romance and adventure to the wadis of the Dead Sea.
Read more

Walker in the Shadows (1979)

Image
                                                            Listening: I Was Made for Lovin' You Recently widowed Pat Robbins and her teenage son Mark are intrigued by the neighbors who move in to the house next door--a twin to their own beloved mid-nineteenth century American Gothic. Their relationship starts roughly when Mark's interest in lovely young Kathy is repulsed by her stern father. But when something ghostly takes a malevolent interest in Kathy, the families draw together to try and unravel whatever grudge the two old houses have been brooding over for centuries...
Read more

The Wizard's Daughter (1980)

Image
  Daydream Believer Left penniless by her father's death, Marianna Ransom must make her own way in life. Beautiful and kind, but hopelessly naive, her attempts at independence lead to disaster. At her lowest ebb, the Dowager Duchess of Devenbrook steps in. Wealthy, beautiful and kind, the Dowager claims Marianne is actually the long-lost daughter of the famed, murdered spiritualist David Holmes, whom she loved as a son. But the privileges suddenly showered on Marianne come at a cost--she is expected to present the spirit of her purported father to the grieving woman. As if that were not bad enough, ghostly visitations do seem to grace her attempts. As the anniversary of the man's death approaches, something dangerous seems to stalk the halls of Marianne's new home...and it seems to be stalking the woman she has come to love as a mother...
Read more