The Shakespeare Secret by J.L Carrell

PROLOGUE

June 29, 1613

‘From the river, it looked as if two suns were setting over London.

One was sinking in the west, streaming ribbons of glory in pink and melon and gold. It was the second sun, though, that had conjured an unruly flotilla of boats and barges, skiffs and wherries, onto the dark surface of the Thames: across from the broken tower of St Paul’s, a sullen orange sphere looked to have missed the horizon altogether and rammed itself into the southern bank. Hunkering down amid the taverns and brothels of Southwark, it spiked vicious blades of flame at the night.

It wasn’t, of course, another sun, though men who fancied themselves poets sent that conceit rippling from boat to boat. It was, or had been, a building. The most famous of London’s famed theatres, the hollow wooden O, round seat of the city’s dreams, the great Globe itself, was burning. And all of London had turned out on the water to watch.’

I picked up this book on the strength of the word shakespeare in the title. i love to read anything that is concerned with the bard and put my hopes on this being a good novel. i wasn’t dissapointed!

Opening with the fire of the globe on the exact date that it had previously burned down, followed by some very theatrical and Shakespearean murder’s i was drawn into and thoroughly enjoyed my reading of this book. The  quest of the book was to find a very important secret in the world of literary  knowledge one would possibly change the history of the bard himself. The knowledge of WHO he really was. many of the theories that i have heard before were  explored in the book and some new ones which i hadn’t heard, this gave it a bit of freshness. A thoroughly enjoyable book with twists and turns in the plot to keep you interested throughout.