———.Ill Met by Murder. New York: Crooked Lane, 2016.
———. Much Ado About Murder. New York: Crooked Lane, 2017.
Because I was going to be away from the grid for a while, I searched my library's electronic book holdings for anything related to Shakespeare. That's how I came upon Ill Met by Murder, the second of three books in the "Shakespeare i' th' Catskills" mystery series.
I knew from the first that it was not going to be a good book, but I held out because of the Shakespeare.
But, honestly. A murder mystery where everyone ignores the murder and worries a lot more about a dognapping? And a murder mystery where no one goes about trying to solve the murder . . . But it just ends up solved? It seemed barely to fit the genre.
In addition, everyone spoke like they were reading from a script the entire time—whether they were in the play or not.
We were also give a lot of meticulous detail, which is often quite interesting; however, in this case, we got meticulous detail about things we can't possible care about.
Finally, there wasn't much Shakespeare—and what there was didn't integrate in any way with the plot of the novel.
Undaunted (well, honestly, a little bit daunted), I tried another. I mistakenly thought I had read the first in the series, and I hoped that they would get better. Instead, I took a step back to the first book, and it wasn't much better. But Untimely Death had a bit more Shakespeare in it. The plot involves a troupe of actors who are invited to do a special performance of Midsummer Night's Dream the day before the big society wedding. I'll give you a flavor of it:
Being either a glutton for punishment or having a moderate completeness disorder, I then turned to Much Ado About Murder to round things out.
I did get more Shakespeare—and more connections between the plot of the murder mystery and the plot of Shakespeare's play, but the way Much Ado About Nothing was employed strained credulity. The company has to bring in a new director, and he wants to set the play just after the Civil War. "Ah," I thought. "An interesting decision. I wonder how it will work out and we'll be able to notice about the play that we might not otherwise see."
Instead, everyone in the cast and crew absolutely freaks out—as if they'd never heard of changing Shakespeare's setting and are deeply offended and incensed at the mere idea. Here's chapter five, in which that decision is revealed and we see the initial reactions:
I'll let you read the rest of the novel to see if this directorial decision becomes the motive for murder or not.
The idea for the series had potential, but it certainly doesn't live up to it.
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(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).
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