A Plague of Angels

October 2, 2000
In this fourth mystery featuring Sir Robert Carey (after A Surfeit of Guns), strong writing and a wealth of detail about Elizabethan London cannot make up for a painfully slow plot. The book opens with Carey and his sidekick, Sergeant Dodd, on the road to London, a clever and lively scene that promises much more action than what actually follows. Carey, based on a historical figure of the same name, has been called to the city by his father, Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon, half-brother to Queen Elizabeth, to search for his missing brother Edmund. It seems Edmund, never the most sensible of men, has gotten himself mixed up in false alchemy and counterfeiting, a crime that is considered treason. As Carey and Dodd investigate the scheme that drew in Edmund, they discover that Thomas Heneage, the greedy and cruel vice chamberlain, is almost certainly involved. Facts, however, are as elusive as Edmund continues to be. Alternately helped and hindered by the playwrights Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, and merely frustrated by the poet Robert Greene, Carey and Dodd dart about the streets of London, visiting bars and churches, literally avoiding the plague as well as the wiles of the lovely Mistress Bassano. Traitors and allies are finally sorted out in the Fleet, a debtor's prison in London that Chisholm (the pseudonym of historical novelist Patricia Finney) portrays in all its sordid misery.

December 15, 2000
The fourth Sir Robert Carey mystery finds the Deputy Warden of the West Marshes (on the England/Scotland border) returning to London after the adventures chronicled in "A "Surfeit of Guns (1997). It's August 1592, and Carey, struggling to scrape together enough cash to pay off his debts, finds himself embroiled in a feud between a couple of playwrights: Robert Greene and a young fellow called William Shakespeare. Chisholm displays a real knack for comedy here, in a tale that is noticeably lighter than the earlier installments in the series. This is no lumpy, historically accurate but dramatically dull novel; it's a lively, lifelike adventure that just happens to feature some of the most famous people in the history of drama (Christopher Marlowe also takes a turn). The author's change of pace from more serious fare should please her fans and win her a lot of new ones, too. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)