Thirteenth Night: A Fool's Guild Medieval Mystery

by Alan Gordon

Overview

Twelfth Night is for revelry, Thirteenth Night is for revelations...

"Orsino is dead." The message sends the jester Feste, disguised as a German merchant, back to the duchy where, years earlier, he had foiled the plans of Saladin's agent, Malvolio, and secured the duchy for Orsino and his bride, Viola. As agent of the Fool's Guild, Feste must uncover the cause of Orsino's death, be it accidental, suicide, or murder. Has Malvolio returned to win the revenge he swore? Or has another, more sinister cabal plunged the duchy into political upheaval?

Set in a brilliantly recreated time of pageantry and squalor, THIRTEENTH NIGHT brings alive a world long vanished. From the fetid canals of Venice to the high seas to the castles and hidden Roman tunnels of Orsino, here is a tale that will keep readers in its thrall until its dramatic and unexpected final scene...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466843363
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/15/2000
Series:	Fools' Guild Mysteries , #1
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	296,004
File size:	402 KB

About the Author

Alan Gordon is a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society and lives with his family in Queens, New York. He is the author of several short stories, which have appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and in the anthology Once Upon a Crime II, among other places. THIRTEENTH NIGHT is his first novel.

Alan Gordon is an attorney with the Legal Aid Society and the author of books including Jester Leaps In. He lives with his family in Queens, NY.

Editorial Reviews

With this interesting setup, Thirteenth Night is an amusing tale and Feste's witty narration is enjoyable. Many of the small details about the time and place were interesting. The mystery, however, is fairly obvious, and none of the characters become more than outlines. With humor but no characters I really cared about, I found this entertaining, but not particularly compelling.
—Mystery Reader.com

Jeri Wright

Mr. Gordon has done an admirable job of recreating the Italy of 1200....He's also successfully hitchhiked on Shakespeare's plot before taking it where the Bard had no idea it would go.

Washington Times

If Gordon's title expands on Shakespeare's play, so does his plot. Narrator Feste, a 13th-century member of the Fool's Guild (jugglers, jesters, and secret agents), owns up to contriving the main events concerning the Duke of Orsino as subsequently recounted in Twelfth Night. Now, years later, the duke has been murdered, and Feste, traveling incognito as a German tradesman, braves an ocean voyage to investigate his death and perhaps stymie a vengeful Malvolio. Witty wordplay, comical characters, and exaggerated circumstances mark this fanciful and entertaining historical by a lawyer who has previously published nine mystery stories.

Library Journal

It's early in the 13th century, and hidden away in the Dolomites is a village that's home to the Guildhall, an academy for jesters, jugglers, magicians, etc.-a School for Fools. One of the most expert of these is Theophilos, who 15 years ago and calling himself Feste, had played an important role in the life of a commercial town on the Adriatic-leaving it in the hands of the Count of Orsino and his wife Viola, but aware that their powerful enemy Malvolio was ever lurking. Now a messenger has arrived with news that the Count has died in a fall from a cliff, and Theophilos, convinced that Malvolio is involved and encouraged by his mentor Father Gerald, decides to return to the town and see justice done. It doesn't take long for him to determine that Orsino's death was no accident and to become aware that Malvolio is still on the scene, working to destroy the Orsino family as well as his old enemy Feste. Several jumbled plots are at work here, their flow interrupted by an avalanche of local color, religious pageantry, and details of bloody, often fatal encounters. History students of the place and period may find it rewarding. For most others, a test of endurance. .

Kirkus Reviews