The bookman's tale by Charlie Lovett
Text, 2013. ISBN 9781922079336.
(Senior secondary readers) The bookman's tale by Charlie
Lovett is a thriller about bibliophiles, bibliopegy and greed. Books
are bound, hidden and discovered, along with the occasional body, in
this story that ranges from Shakespearean England to the 1990's.
While Shakespeare's canon is hallowed ground, the recognition of
Shakespeare as author is under threat from the anti-Stratfordians,
those who believe that Shakespeare could not have written the works
attributed to him. The main character, Peter Byerley, is an
antiquarian bookseller and book binder. He has the good fortune to
meet the beautiful Amanda, who not only falls in love with Peter but
is also very wealthy, thus allowing him to pursue his chosen
occupation. After the death of Amanda, Peter moves to England and
becomes involved with a book collector who may have a Folio edition
of Shakespeare's play Hamlet. Instead Peter finds a pamphlet
written by Robert Greene, a contemporary of Shakespeare, and
seemingly annotated with Shakespeare's marginalia. This would prove
beyond doubt that Shakespeare was the author of the plays, but is
the document a forgery? The owner of the pamphlet needs money and
Peter feels that he cannot be trusted. The author weaves a tangled
and complicated web of inter-family rivalry that stretches back to
the nineteenth century. In his investigation the mild-mannered Peter
becomes implicated in a murder, is trapped in a medieval chapel,
finds an underground tunnel, overcomes claustrophobia and outwits a
gun-toting murderer. Peter is convinced that the document he has is
a forgery, but he also believes that he knows where the original is.
In a retrospective deus ex machina, Peter himself is the rightful
owner of it.
There is a wealth of information here about books and book
restoration, about Shakespeare and his contemporaries and about
Shakespearean scholarship. This is the novel's strength. The plot
seems unbelievably Machiavellian and is quite complicated. Peter is
an unlikely hero but a convincing book lover. The novel is suitable
for older readers.
Jenny Hamilton