Plume (a Penguin publication), 2007. ISBN 978-0-452-28989-5. Reviewed by Katherine Misegades Posted on 09/22/2008 Fiction: Mystery

In Interred with Their Bones, Kate Stanley, Shakespeare scholar turned theater director, tracks down a lost play of Shakespeare in an Indiana Jones-style action adventure punctuated by globe-spanning travel and multiple murders. Her story is presented in five acts with brief interludes set in the early seventeenth century and told in another voice.

Unlike some novels that sound so real that they could be confused with nonfiction, this is obviously fiction from the outset. For example, the current Globe Theatre hasn't had a fire but did in the book. The story moves at a fast pace, pausing only to explain scholarly facts that readers might not know. Like many Americans, my main exposure to Shakespeare consisted of reading Julius Caesar and memorizing lines from Macbeth in high school English, so I found the explanations helpful and interesting.

Since I rarely read action adventure fiction, I had no preconceived ideas about this book. I simply had fun reading it, despite the gruesome murders. The book is not heavy on character development but it did give me a thorough sense of the history and geography.

Visit the author's website. The Arizona Star published this biography of the author. A reader's guide is offered at Little, Brown Co..

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