Because Ideas Matter...
The faculty and staff of Butler University's College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences presents
Recommended Readings
The Book of Air and Shadows
by Michael Grube, HarperCollins 2007
Reviewed by Judi Morrel
If you enjoyed Dan Brown's The Da Vinci
Code, then you will love this smart, literary thriller by Michael
Gruber. With a finely drawn cast of characters including an
intellectual property attorney, a pair of antiquarian bookstore
workers, a soldier/actor from the Shakespearean era, and members of
the Russian mob, the story revolves around the discovery of a set
of ciphered letters purportedly written by an acquaintance of
William Shakespeare. These letters, found within the binding of an
antique book damaged in a bookstore fire, claim that the Bard
actually wrote an until-now-unknown play about Mary Queen of Scots
(and, of course, that Shakespeare was actually a secret Papist).
The letters, once deciphered (there's a good bit of fascinating
code-breaking and cryptological information in the text), also
point to the location of a hiding place for the manuscript. The
existence of such a play would, of course, rock the literary world,
so, as you might imagine, many folks, some academically motivated,
some commercially motivated, are interested in finding such a
manuscript. As the plot moves back and forth both in time and in
location, questions arise about the authenticity of the letters. Is
it an elaborate hoax or is it true? You will be kept in suspense in
this fast-paced page-turner.
- Judi Morrel is associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts
and Sciences and associate professor of mathematics at Butler
University.