Book review: Heresy
Parris, S.J. Heresy: an Elizabethan thriller. (Anchor, 2011)
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was an Italian friar, alchemist, mathematician, and astronomer, and was burned at the stake as a heretic. He visited the university of Oxford in 1583, debated the heliocentric theory of Copernicus with the Rector of Lincoln College, and is sometimes suspected of having been working for Queen Elizabeth's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham. That much is history (except for that last item, which counts more as historical gossip).
Stephanie Merritt, writing as S.J. Parris, has taken those historical incidents (plus the Walsingham connection) and used them as the basis of a mystery novel-she calls it a "thriller" which is fair enough, in that it's a mystery novel with action sequences. The background is England in the 1580s, where Protestantism is the same thing as political loyalty to Queen Elizabeth, and Catholicism is treason and sedition; the setting is Lincoln College, where (almost) every member of the faculty with a name has his own secret plot twist; and the protagonist is Bruno, whose "modern" views of astronomy (he doesn't just believe the earth goes around the sun, he believes the sun is a star like the other stars, which might well have their own planetary systems) make him a more plausible modern-style rational investigator than your average Elizabethan.
As a mystery, it's pretty good: keeps moving, interesting twists, I figured out a couple of clues before Bruno did (which is always good) but didn't quite put the whole picture together before him (which is also good). As an historical novel, it included a lot of period details but did not manage to make me feel like I was back in Elizabethan England. There is the obligatory self-educated, independent-minded young woman to whom our hero is attracted for her mind as much as her beauty. There's enough running around the city that a map would have been helpful, for all that I used to know my way around Oxford.
Three woofs. Strongly reminiscent of Eco's Name of the Rose, with the heretics and the gruesome serial murders and the search for a lost book of forbidden lore, but more readable and with fewer digressions. I understand a sequel has just come out; it's probably worth looking for too.
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was an Italian friar, alchemist, mathematician, and astronomer, and was burned at the stake as a heretic. He visited the university of Oxford in 1583, debated the heliocentric theory of Copernicus with the Rector of Lincoln College, and is sometimes suspected of having been working for Queen Elizabeth's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham. That much is history (except for that last item, which counts more as historical gossip).
Stephanie Merritt, writing as S.J. Parris, has taken those historical incidents (plus the Walsingham connection) and used them as the basis of a mystery novel-she calls it a "thriller" which is fair enough, in that it's a mystery novel with action sequences. The background is England in the 1580s, where Protestantism is the same thing as political loyalty to Queen Elizabeth, and Catholicism is treason and sedition; the setting is Lincoln College, where (almost) every member of the faculty with a name has his own secret plot twist; and the protagonist is Bruno, whose "modern" views of astronomy (he doesn't just believe the earth goes around the sun, he believes the sun is a star like the other stars, which might well have their own planetary systems) make him a more plausible modern-style rational investigator than your average Elizabethan.
As a mystery, it's pretty good: keeps moving, interesting twists, I figured out a couple of clues before Bruno did (which is always good) but didn't quite put the whole picture together before him (which is also good). As an historical novel, it included a lot of period details but did not manage to make me feel like I was back in Elizabethan England. There is the obligatory self-educated, independent-minded young woman to whom our hero is attracted for her mind as much as her beauty. There's enough running around the city that a map would have been helpful, for all that I used to know my way around Oxford.
Three woofs. Strongly reminiscent of Eco's Name of the Rose, with the heretics and the gruesome serial murders and the search for a lost book of forbidden lore, but more readable and with fewer digressions. I understand a sequel has just come out; it's probably worth looking for too.