The Spy of Venice
by Benet Brandreth
It is a bold move to pick William Shakespeare as your protagonist. To throw him into a historical thriller, complete with seductive women and cruel villains, is bolder still. However, The Spy of Venice is a debut novel written with sufficient swagger to justify the author’s hubris.
The novel begins in Stratford, where a young Will is bored and lustful. His seduction of a local heiress forces him to leave town and attempt to make his way in London’s cut-throat theatre business. The penniless actor and poet is coerced into joining a diplomatic mission to Venice with his fellow actors.
On the journey across Europe, the Englishmen are attacked. Surviving the attempt on his life, Will and another actor carry on to Venice disguised as the ambassador and his servant. Beautiful courtesans, seductive architecture, dastardly assassins and a villain named Prospero — geddit! — compete to divert Will from the convoluted plot; something to do with a vicious pope and a list of spies. The “spot the allusion to later plays” game that the author plays with the reader will either amuse or irritate.
Although Benet Brandreth’s Shakespeare lacks the profundity of other fictional accounts of the playwright, such as Christopher Rush’s excellent Will (Polygon), The Spy of Venice is a playful and inventive debut. The dialogue is wonderful, and Will’s banter with his fellow actors sparkles.
Twenty7, 448pp; £16.99. To buy this book for £14.99 visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134
BOOK OF THE MONTH
Orhan’s Inheritance
by Aline Ohanesian
Another debut, Orhan’s Inheritance, is a searing story about the massacre of the Armenian population of Turkey during the First World War. Orhan, a young man living in Istanbul in 1990, returns to his family’s village in Anatolia on the death of his grandfather, Kemal. His grandfather’s will leaves the family house to an unknown woman called Seda Melkonian. In a bid to recover the house, Orhan tracks her down to an old people’s home in America, where she is surrounded by other ancient Armenians.
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Seda resists Orhan’s attempts to uncover the past, amid a resurgent interest in the massacre among younger Armenians. The old people in the home are “like ancient tea bags steeped in the murky waters of the past, repeating their stories over and over again to anyone who will listen”.
When Seda’s story emerges, it is devastating. She was one of a family of rich Armenians who were forcibly removed from their homes, and marched across Turkey. The 15-year-old girl at the heart of the tale, Lucine, tries to keep her younger siblings alive as the Turkish state turns on its Armenian Christians. Lucine’s beloved is a young Turkish boy, Kemal — Orhan’s grandfather — who is confronted by his own helplessness.
The modern frame for the central story allows the book to ask uncomfortable questions about why we examine our past. In whose interest is the telling of these stories? How culpable are we for the sins of our fathers? The author, Aline Ohanesian, is an American of Armenian descent and she has drawn on her family history to write this powerful book. She does not allow the thematic richness of the book to overwhelm the passionate, human story at its heart. My book of the month.
Algonquin Books, 368pp; £10.99. To buy this book for £9.89 visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134
Hunting the Eagles
by Ben Kane
Another era, another massacre. Hunting the Eagles is the follow-up to the excellent Eagles at War, which recounted the annihilation of three Roman legions in the Teutoburg forest. In this instalment, survivor Centurion Tullus and his men join the campaign to pacify the rebellious Germans and rescue the lost Eagles.
Their leader is Germanicus, nephew to the Emperor Tiberius and father to the toddler who will become Caligula. Germanicus’s response to the German threat is brutal. Men, women and children will be massacred in the name of peace — and Tullus will help to mete out Roman justice. Meanwhile, the brilliant and ruthless German chieftain Arminius is massing the tribes again.
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The book calls to mind the famous quote from Tacitus’s Agricola, in which a barbarian describes the Pax Romana as: “They bring a desert and call it peace.” Ben Kane is excellent on the morally murky waters in which Tullus and his fellow legionaries wade; Tullus does not do anachronistic introspection about the Roman mission, but he does manage to keep his humanity.
Hunting the Eagle may lack the dramatic pulse of the first book in the series, in which Tullus huddled with the spellbound reader in the dark forest as the barbarians howled, but Kane has written another compelling, dark tale.
Random House, 400pp; £12.99. To buy this book for £11.69, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134
Wrath of the Furies
by Steven Saylor
The Romans themselves are the ones being massacred in Steven Saylor’s Wrath of the Furies. The latest in his long-running series about Gordianus the Finder is set during his hero’s youth. The historical impetus for the novel is the attempt by the King of Pontus, Mithridates, to wrest power in the Mediterranean back from the usurping Romans.
In 88BC, the young Gordianus and his slave, the beautiful Bethesda, are staying outside Alexandria when he receives cryptic missive from a former tutor. Convinced that he must rescue his endangered mentor, Gordianus sets out for besieged Ephesus, posing as a mute Greek to avoid being unveiled as a Roman.
The cruel and autocratic Mithridates, meanwhile, is attempting to rid the world of Romans in a planned massacre of Latin speakers in the Greek world. Gordianus and Bethesda must fight to survive.
Constable, 320pp; £18.99. To buy this book for £17.09, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134
The White Ship
by Nicholas Salaman
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In The White Ship by Nicholas Salaman, the autocrat at the heart of the story is Henry I, the King of England and Normany. Our hero, Bertold, is the bastard, monastery-educated son of a Norman baron. He becomes the tutor to the daughters of Juliana, the illegitimate daughter of Henry — and their mother’s lover. When Juliana’s husband betrays Henry I, the King exacts a terrible revenge on Juliana’s daughters, provoking a feud that will alter history. A riveting read, with an engaging, likable hero.
Accent Press, 300pp; £7.99. To buy this book for £7.59, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134
