The Pale Companion - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1841197157 ISBN 13: 9781841197159

Publisher: Robinson, 1876

Synopsis

Third in the entertaining adventures of Shakespearean actor and sleuth, Nick Revill It is midsummer in the year 1601. Nick Revill and his fellow actors of the company known as the Chamberlain's Men are journeying across the Wiltshire Downs for a country-house presentation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It should be a pleasant well-paid jaunt to celebrate a noble marriage, but instead the players find themselves in the midst of a tense family atmosphere, somehow linked to the presence of the household's sinister steward. Very soon Nick finds that the Dream has turned into a nightmare, where murder appears commonplace, and before too long he must fight to save his own life against the ancient backdrop of Stonehenge...

About this title

About the Author

Philip Gooden is the author of Sleep of Death and Death of Kings, the first two novels in the Nick Revill series. A contributor to various short story anthologies, he also works as an editor, notably on the excellent anthology The Mammoth Book of Literary Anecdotes. He lives in Bath, where he is currently working on his fourth Nick Revill mystery.

From Publishers Weekly

Welcome to Elizabethan England, where British author Gooden's pale companion will give you a gratifying taste of the danger and excitement of that lusty place and time. In midsummer of 1601, the Chamberlain's Men, a troupe of actors based in London at the Globe, are set to perform a play written by one of their members, young Will Shakespeare, for the marriage of Lord Elcombe's elder son. Nicholas Revill, in his third appearance as a minor actor and major sleuth with the Men (That Sleep of Death; Death of Kings), soon realizes that this Midsummer Night's Dream is turning into a nightmare. During a postprandial stroll through the woods, Nick first becomes aware that there's a "presence" dogging his footsteps. In one form or another this "pale companion" haunts the story, as in "the moon pale companion to our revels" or the couple (one of whom is light, the other dark) that Nick observes in the garden the night before a body is discovered pinned to the sundial by its tapered brass gnomon. Wanting no more pale companions, Nick proceeds to solve the mysteries. Gooden admirably conveys the sense of period and place through accurate details of Elizabethan "business." Hangings were considered great sport, especially in London, where a "Tyburn turn-off" was as good as a party. And the wedding feast is a culinary treasure trove of goodies: conies, manchets, kissing-comfits and Spanish paps. Historical mystery fans are in for a treat.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Robinson
• Publication date: 1876
• ISBN 10: 1841197157
• ISBN 13: 9781841197159
• Binding: Hardcover