The connection:
Alan Gordon has written a series of mystery novels, known collectively as the Fools’ Guild series. Although the series is reasonably successful, St. Martin’s Press allowed the first novel to fall out of print. That makes it difficult for people who like to start a series at the beginning, and also difficult for people who make a living selling books to sell books to people who like to start a series at the beginning. One of those booksellers is Jim Huang. Jim Huang is also a publisher. Jim Huang also went to college with Alan Gordon.
Aha! An idea. Mr. Huang’s press, named for the creek that runs alongside the campus where he and Mr. Gordon matriculated, decides to reprint initial novels in series, including Thirteenth Night. Very cozy, and (I would imagine) moderately profitable as well.
Now, the other thing for which Mr. Huang is world famous within the friendly confines of his Alma Mater is the founding of a society devoted to Warding Imaginative Literature, which society continues to this very day warding, or warding off, or rewarding, or whatever it is that warders do. Your Humble Blogger himself was one of those warders, back in the day. My Best Reader, as it happens, proved her sentience (a requirement for warderousness) by expelling me from a meeting of the society. Thus, when my Best Reader happened to meet Mr. Huang in K-A-L-A-M-A-Z-O-O-o-oh,oh, oh never mind, the connection resulted in the purchase and eventual reading of 13th. The book was passed on to Your Humble Blogger, who having read it, writes this very note you are reading, gently one hopes, at the moment.
The book itself? Oh, it’s fine. Some clever bits, some annoying bits, some genre conventions, some originality. Although it’s a Shakespeare-inspired book, it doesn’t go in for mock-Shakespearean language, which is nice. I enjoyed this more than any other medieval mystery I’ve read in quite a while, which as I see from my archive, means three books in fifteen months or so. I expect to read more of them, soon, which was what Mr. Huang and Mr. Gordon (and St. Martin) wanted, presumably, right?
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.