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Shakespeare & Smythe #3
Much Ado About Murder
Fledgling playwright Will Shakespeare and Symington Smythe, ostler and would-be thespian, and are now firmly ensconced in their theater company . . . But due to the plague, all of London's theaters have been closed, its players now broke, forcing our intrepid duo to seek employment in other lines of work--Smythe smithing and Will poeting.
Then a murder rocks all of London.
Shakespeare and Smythe decide to solve the crime, but they must rely on their wits to survive both the conspiriacies and the cutthroat business of Elizabethan theater
Then a murder rocks all of London.
Shakespeare and Smythe decide to solve the crime, but they must rely on their wits to survive both the conspiriacies and the cutthroat business of Elizabethan theater
237 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2002
2 people are currently reading
106 people want to read
About the author
Simon Hawke
89 books238 followersAlso published as J.D. Masters.
He was born Nicholas Valentin Yermakov, but began writing as Simon Hawke in 1984 and later changed his legal name to Hawke. He has also written near future adventure novels under the penname "J. D. Masters" and mystery novels.
He was born Nicholas Valentin Yermakov, but began writing as Simon Hawke in 1984 and later changed his legal name to Hawke. He has also written near future adventure novels under the penname "J. D. Masters" and mystery novels.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 30, 2023
Okay, I can’t say that I overly enjoyed this book. The first 2/3 of the book was boring, long winded, uneventful, and just blah. The last 1/3 of the book picked up but was utterly predictable it hurt. I was hoping it was going to be more detailed and involved but this was not the case. Evidently this is a book included in a serious of other Smythe & Young Shakespeare novels; however, this one was such a snooze-fest, I will not be reading the others in the series.
July 7, 2024
Youngish Shakespeare (before his fame) and his co-thespian Smythe in a mystery adventure that takes over half the book to get started. Good thing I enjoyed the setting and characters enough that I didn't mind 130 pages of set-up, leading to a fairly quickly settled mystery.
April 10, 2022
Will Tuck never learn to carry a sword?
The story centers around the wild apprentices who stalk the streets of London causing mayhem. Hawke gives a good description of how they got to be this way, drawing some parallels with inner city youth but also, in our current troubling times, disaffected middle-aged people.
Ben, a former member of the Queen's Men is home from war. Like Baby Boomers I knew, he seems to roam from one vocation to another: theatre, armory, youthful violence, soldier of fortune, and now perhaps back to theatre until he can find something else. He appears to be an early Method Actor. Tuck is thrashed by Ben's former apprentice chums and his childhood friend is accused of murder. Can Will solve it?
Maybe not quite as entertaining as the previous novels, perhaps because of the violent youths. Pity the library doesn't have the next in the series.
Don't make me buy this.
The story centers around the wild apprentices who stalk the streets of London causing mayhem. Hawke gives a good description of how they got to be this way, drawing some parallels with inner city youth but also, in our current troubling times, disaffected middle-aged people.
Ben, a former member of the Queen's Men is home from war. Like Baby Boomers I knew, he seems to roam from one vocation to another: theatre, armory, youthful violence, soldier of fortune, and now perhaps back to theatre until he can find something else. He appears to be an early Method Actor. Tuck is thrashed by Ben's former apprentice chums and his childhood friend is accused of murder. Can Will solve it?
Maybe not quite as entertaining as the previous novels, perhaps because of the violent youths. Pity the library doesn't have the next in the series.
Don't make me buy this.
August 11, 2018
A scholar who knows an extraordinary amount about the daily life of Elizabethan England combines his knowledge with an almost invisible plot. The narrative varies between "clever" references to lines from Shakespear's plays and more current slang.
April 13, 2021
An interesting concept that didn't take off for me; a murder mystery written in Shakespearean style
(the author even works in the old Abbott and Costello "who's on first" routine as written by WS) Pleasant enough to read, but will not seek out others in the series.
(the author even works in the old Abbott and Costello "who's on first" routine as written by WS) Pleasant enough to read, but will not seek out others in the series.
July 9, 2013
It may well be that Much Ado About Murder has a stronger historical foundation than its two predecessors in the Shakespeare and Smythe mysteries, but it isn’t as interesting as a mystery. Part of this may be the fact that the murder doesn’t occur until well over halfway through the novel and part of this may be that author Simon Hawke drew from extremely depressing realities from the Elizabethan Era: the plague season when the playhouses were closed for public safety and the apprentice riots where said workers ran like street gangs and created periodic waves of violence and destruction. Another factor may have been the fact that the incidents in this book deal with the unraveling of The Queen’s Men and, even though it ends with a glimmer of hope (that, of course, we know because we know the actual history), means that reading these pages offers a bit of a “downer.”
In spite of the overall depressing nature of the novel, I enjoyed the fascinating trap placed to bring the main problem to a conclusion and Hawke’s continuing creativity in placing literary references within the text. Normally, the latter amount to plays on Shakespearean quotations, but this time there is a play based off Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Miller’s Tale.” Smythe is told that he would have slept through the flood (p. 141). The primary reference is to the flood recorded in Genesis, but the idea of sleeping through the flood sounds like the tale where a lustful cleric decides that he can have his way with a man’s wife if he can convince the husband that he needs to ensconce himself in a large barrel because a flood of Noahic proportions is coming. The husband falls asleep in the barrel, waiting for a flood that is never destined to come and, when things go awry and the noisy disaster awakens him, he shouts, “Noah’s Flood!” (Well, Chaucer had something like “Noel’s Fludde!” but you get the idea!)
Mere pages later, we see a double example of twisting the bard’s own phrases “against” him. On page 143, we hear a cry of “My kingdom for a sword” (instead of Richard III’s “horse”) and an invocation of “Friends! Colleagues! Countrymen!” (instead of Marc Anthony’s funeral oration). Add to that an earlier reference to Julius Caesar where “’Ton Tuck hath a lean and hungry look” (with Tuck ironically taking the place of Cassius, somewhere near page 17). But, alas, the humor present in the first two volumes of the series seemed rather restricted in this volume. I plan to keep reading, but this one suffers in comparison to the first two.
In spite of the overall depressing nature of the novel, I enjoyed the fascinating trap placed to bring the main problem to a conclusion and Hawke’s continuing creativity in placing literary references within the text. Normally, the latter amount to plays on Shakespearean quotations, but this time there is a play based off Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Miller’s Tale.” Smythe is told that he would have slept through the flood (p. 141). The primary reference is to the flood recorded in Genesis, but the idea of sleeping through the flood sounds like the tale where a lustful cleric decides that he can have his way with a man’s wife if he can convince the husband that he needs to ensconce himself in a large barrel because a flood of Noahic proportions is coming. The husband falls asleep in the barrel, waiting for a flood that is never destined to come and, when things go awry and the noisy disaster awakens him, he shouts, “Noah’s Flood!” (Well, Chaucer had something like “Noel’s Fludde!” but you get the idea!)
Mere pages later, we see a double example of twisting the bard’s own phrases “against” him. On page 143, we hear a cry of “My kingdom for a sword” (instead of Richard III’s “horse”) and an invocation of “Friends! Colleagues! Countrymen!” (instead of Marc Anthony’s funeral oration). Add to that an earlier reference to Julius Caesar where “’Ton Tuck hath a lean and hungry look” (with Tuck ironically taking the place of Cassius, somewhere near page 17). But, alas, the humor present in the first two volumes of the series seemed rather restricted in this volume. I plan to keep reading, but this one suffers in comparison to the first two.
September 7, 2016
An interesting take on a way to present a mystery, but once was enough for me. I tire of cutsy fast.
From Amazon
Shakespeare and Smythe are at it again in their third literary mystery romp set in the world of the Elizabethan theater.
The plague is in town and the theaters are closed by royal decree, so even though fledgling playwright Will Shakespeare and would-be thespian and part-time ostler Symington Smythe are now fully ensconced members of a theater company, the two inadvertent shamuses of the stage world are once again, at least temporarily, out of work.
To make ends meet, Smythe resorts to smithing while Will becomes a poet for hire involved with the affairs of a certain dark lady . . . until entertainment-starved London is rocked by an apparent crime of passion with all of the requisite elements of a Greek tragedy.
But life is never as simple as a stage-bound construct, and soon the detective duo find themselves involved in an affair that makes. . .
From Amazon
Shakespeare and Smythe are at it again in their third literary mystery romp set in the world of the Elizabethan theater.
The plague is in town and the theaters are closed by royal decree, so even though fledgling playwright Will Shakespeare and would-be thespian and part-time ostler Symington Smythe are now fully ensconced members of a theater company, the two inadvertent shamuses of the stage world are once again, at least temporarily, out of work.
To make ends meet, Smythe resorts to smithing while Will becomes a poet for hire involved with the affairs of a certain dark lady . . . until entertainment-starved London is rocked by an apparent crime of passion with all of the requisite elements of a Greek tragedy.
But life is never as simple as a stage-bound construct, and soon the detective duo find themselves involved in an affair that makes. . .
July 6, 2012
This is the third in the series and maybe the weakest so far but that is not to say that it is not a fun romp through the England of Shakespeare's time. Good immersion in not only the setting but Shakespeare's own turns of phrases come out of more than one character's mouth - fun to recognize and place them. The author deals with street gangs in a way that is both sensitive and sensible explaining the social rationale of apprentices being without social power and often without families wanting to create a gang in which they held power, earned respect (albeit a false kind garnered by installing fear in others), and had a family of sorts. The characters are similarly created with a gentleness and firm grasp on human nature. Good mystery - an easy fun read.
October 26, 2013
I picked up this book at a library sale and, as usual, it is the third in the series but it doesn't seem as if it is necessary to read them in order. The book is set in a period when not much is known about Shakespeare's activities, and before he wrote his famous plays, leaving the author free to make him a sleuth. What I enjoyed was recognizing quotes from Shakepeare's [future] plays coming from every character's mouth. I was starting to wonder where the murder went since it didn't turn up until at least half way through the book but, when it finally came, it was a good opportunity for Shakespeare to channel Hercule Poirot. The characters, Shakespeare and Smythe, are likeable and I will probably pick up the earlier books in the series eventually.
March 15, 2011
Another brillent mystery inspired by the life and work of William Shakespeare.
As one might easily assume Character names and sub Plot are taken from one of The Bard's best plays, "Much ado about Nothing." But whether or not you have read the play will not matter for the murder and intrigue was not part of Shakespeare's script. The real heart of the mystery is pulled right from the streets of Shakespeare's London.
Especially fun is the way that Shakespeare uses logic and deduction to close the case quickly. Like an Elizabethian Sherlock Holmes. If Sherlock drank a lot and Quoted Shakespearian verse.
As one might easily assume Character names and sub Plot are taken from one of The Bard's best plays, "Much ado about Nothing." But whether or not you have read the play will not matter for the murder and intrigue was not part of Shakespeare's script. The real heart of the mystery is pulled right from the streets of Shakespeare's London.
Especially fun is the way that Shakespeare uses logic and deduction to close the case quickly. Like an Elizabethian Sherlock Holmes. If Sherlock drank a lot and Quoted Shakespearian verse.
September 24, 2010
One of four (so far) clever whodunnits set in Shakespeare's Elizabethan London, starring the unlikely pair of investigators, John Smythe (would-be actor) and Shakespeare himself (playwright and part-time sleuth).
January 7, 2010
It's silly fun. The history and details are great. The dialogue can be fun. It's not a serious mystery but it was fun.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews