We saw Shake­speare in the Park’s production of Twelfth Night at Seward Park last week, which prompted me to re-read this book.

Fifteen years ago, Theophilos, an agent of the Fool’s Guild, then working in his guise as Feste the Jester, initiated the events roughly described in Shake­speare’s play, and foiled Saladin’s agent, Malvolio. Now the duke of Orsino is dead under suspicious cir­cum­stances, and Theo goes back, disguised as a German merchant.

Theo is witty, quick-witted, and po­lit­i­cal­ly astute, making for an engaging narrator of this medieval mystery.

Sugawara Akitada has been appointed as the governor of a remote northern province in feudal Japan. Aided only by a handful of retainers, he is beset by his own doubts and hostile locals. Winter is closing in and he must exert his fragile authority to rein in a mutinous baron, while also in­ves­ti­gat­ing some mysterious deaths and righting old wrongs.

Parker evokes the spare, stark beauty of Japan, in a well-written historical mystery.

Fifteen months after the release of Vim 7.1, Bram announced the release of Vim 7.2 last weekend. No major new features, just the con­sol­i­da­tion of more than 300 patches. He also included a mention of the new dis­tri­b­u­tion point for Win64 binaries, the vim-win3264 project that I set up at Google Code.

Bram has no way of testing the Win64 version, so I’m providing the official build at vim-win3264. I will no longer provide Win64 binaries for Vim from my own site. The Vim 7.2 sources compile the Win64 binaries cleanly (unlike the 7.1 release). I’ll provide occasional in­ter­me­di­ate releases up there too, for both Win32 and Win64.

I’m rather surprised to see that …continue.

King Richard III, hunchback, last of the Plante­genets, one of Shake­speare’s blackest villains, and long decried as the murderer of Princes in the Tower. But did he really murder his nephews to cement his hold on his throne?

Inspector Grant, confined to a hospital bed, is given a portrait of Richard III, and finds that he cannot believe that this was the face of a cold-blooded villain. Aided by a young historial researcher, he conducts an inquiry from his bed, and makes a convincing case that another was the murderer.

More at the Wikipedia …continue.

Sequel to Club Dead.

A coven of evil, powerful witches has moved into the area, and are causing havoc amongst the local su­per­nat­u­rals. The local vampire boss has been bespelled and lost his memory, and Sookie has to look after him. He’s very attractive and she’s on the rebound. And her brother has gone missing.

Sookie is a nice gal, struggling with a disability – telepathy causes more trouble than it solves – and trying to survive on the edges of the dangerous world of the Supes.

Rudi Rosenharte is an East German academic, re­luc­tant­ly working for the Stasi, in the months before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Stasi are holding his twin brother, Konrad, hostage. Rudi’s desperate to get Konrad and his family out, and he’s recruited by British In­tel­li­gence.

Rudi ends up keeping four in­tel­li­gence services at bay, as he walks along an ever more precarious tightrope. The plot is, of course, im­plau­si­ble. The book brings the sheer nastiness of a police state to life, and shows the East German state collapsing as it …continue.

The Rev. Merrily Watkins is the "de­liv­er­ance consultant" – a euphemism for exorcist – for a diocese on the Welsh border. A Wiccan couple move into a long-de­con­se­crat­ed church in a remote village, and the local fun­da­men­tal­ist-style Anglican priest leads a witchhunt.

The viewpoint characters are all en­ter­tain­ing: level-headed Merrily; her smart-alec teenager, Jane; their old codger neighbor, Gomer; and the two Wiccans, Betty and Robin. The plot is both page-turning and un­hur­ried­ly developed: the first body takes 250 pages to appear. We learn something about con­tem­po­rary village life, Wales, An­gli­can­ism, Wicca, and …continue.

DI John Rebus is struggling with an incipient gang war in Edinburgh. He’s in­ves­ti­gat­ing an elderly academic who might be a Nazi war criminal. A Bosnian prostitute has brought out the white knight in him. His personal life is a mess: He’s off the booze, but work is the only thing keeping him going. And his daughter has been run down in the street, perhaps as a warning to him.

Rebus somehow struggles with all of this, coming out more or less victorious, but at a cost to his …continue.

Suzanne Milner is a graduate student re­search­ing young offenders in Sheffield. She finds the body of a young woman. Soon another young woman’s body is found. There seems to be an un­ex­plained connection between several young people.

Listen to the Shadows works fairly well as a psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller: there are enough twists and mis­di­rec­tion to keep us off-balance and guessing until the end. The pro­tag­o­nist, though, is an ex­as­per­at­ing mess. Beset by deep-seated feelings of inadequacy and festered guilt, she spends most of the book being buffeted by events, reacting helplessly, unable …continue.

As Dr. Watson famously said of Irene Adler, "To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman." Carole Nelson Douglas has parlayed Irene Adler into a series of books.

In Spider Dance, Irene and her friend, Nell Huxleigh, are in New York City, trying to find out who Irene’s long-lost mother was. The infamous Lola Montez is the most likely contender. Holmes is also in town, in­ves­ti­gat­ing a grotesque murder at the Vanderbilt mansion. Inevitably, the two cases become tangled up.

Even by the standards of Sher­lock­iana, the plot is improbable: rogue Ul­tra­mon­tanes, lost fortunes, mausoleums …continue.