Interred With Their Bones, by Jennifer Lee Carrell
Paperback $12.99; Free at your local library
“That the good that we do might live on after us, while the evil lies interred with their bones.”
Let me tell you a little secret about grad students in general, and historians in particular; in the secret heart of our hearts, we all spend obscene amounts of time imagining ourselves as Robert Langdon or Indiana Jones. We daydream elaborate fantasies wherein we discover never-before-seen documents and artifacts, protect them against all odds from nefarious exploitation, winning the heart of a dashing rogue or fair maiden and the admiration of our dissertation committee along the way.
Fantasy, you say? Nay, cry we! It’s only a matter of time!
Now, some of us (sadly) will never live out this fantasy, but that doesn’t stop us. We can live it out in books! Jennifer Lee Carrell’s Interred With Their Bones is an academic adventure in the grand tradition of The DaVinci Code. Heroine Kate Stanley is a historian and Shakespeare scholar turned director. She lands a dream gig directing Hamlet at The Globe (because if we’re going for fantasy, we’re going to fulfill All Of The Fantasies), when her estranged advisor suddenly appears with a mystery to be solved. When tragedy strikes, Kate is sent off on a whirlwind adventure, dodging hitmen, solving riddles, and chasing lost manuscripts and First Folios across two continents.
Our reluctant but intrepid heroine is joined by exactly the cast of characters you’d expect to find in such an adventure: the mentor she left behind, a wise counselor, an ally she isn’t sure she can trust, and a mysterious stranger she probably shouldn’t rely on, but does anyway. To be fair, none of these characters is all that deep, but let’s face it: this isn’t the kind of book we turn to for character analysis.
Likewise the plot is filled with the expected twists and turns and red-herrings, but is a fun journey for all of that. Is it more than a little implausible at times? Yes, absolutely, that’s why we like it. The shenanigans that Kate and her crew get up to are exactly the stuff of daydream adventures. There’s a good dose of history and literature here as well, which balances out the far-fetched storyline. If you’re a Shakespeare aficionado who can suspend belief and follow an adventure down the rabbit-hole, this is a good one to get lost in for awhile.
Bluestocking Rambles 