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rsadelleI liked Laurie King's A Grave Talent enough to request To Play the Fool from the library and give it a try. To Play the Fool falls into one of those categories that sometimes plague novels by people who are generally considered genre authors: it's a good book, but it's not a very good mystery novel.
The story picks up a couple of months after A Grave Talent, and makes reference to a case that takes place between the two books. It's an interesting plot device. I was curious about the intervening case, but King manages to communicate enough of the relevant information about it - largely the role Kate played in it - that it didn't leave me confused about what was going on.
The mystery is the murder of a homeless man. Their primary suspect is another homeless man who goes by the name Brother Erasmus. Erasmus is a Fool - Lee describes the title as "a Jungian archetype, of course, a way of counteracting the tendency of social and religious groups to become concretized" - who only speaks in quotes.
This is where the book falls apart as a mystery. We never know enough about the victim and his circumstances to figure out who really killed him and why. We figure out it was the guy in the car, but there's no way for us to know who that is or what led to the murder.
At the same time, it is very good as a book. Both the author and the character are far more interested in Erasmus than the murder. The real mystery Kate unravels is his identity, which she does somewhat accidentally. She can't get answers she can understand out of him, so she, with Lee's help, starts researching Fools. This leads her to Eve Whitlaw, a visiting professor who is something of an expert. Kate takes Professor Whitlaw to see Erasmus. Professor Whitlaw, of course, recognizes him as David Sawyer from his previous life as a professor himself. Kate gets David to step out of his Erasmus persona and give up the final information they need to catch the murderer, but in the end he returns to the street and his Foolish ways.
Now, it is a good book, and I will read the next one, but I'm hoping the mystery in the next one will be different. Both A Grave Danger and To Play the Fool rely on a ring falling out of a car as a crucial piece of evidence, and both books are about special people who are central to the case. You may remember that I hated the portrayal of Vaun, the artist of the previous book. I didn't have the same feelings about Erasmus, even though Kate has a very similar sense of fascination with him that she did for Vaun. I think there are two things that make this difference. First, we get more of Erasmus as a real person. He isn't the same kind of distant, unknowable being that Vaun was. Even when he's speaking only in quotes, or not at all, he seems human and often seems to be playing. Secondly, Erasmus has much more agency than Vaun did. His demeanor is a choice. Professor Whitlaw says that David was always charismatic, but it's what he does with that charisma, not the charisma itself, that makes Erasmus special.
The story picks up a couple of months after A Grave Talent, and makes reference to a case that takes place between the two books. It's an interesting plot device. I was curious about the intervening case, but King manages to communicate enough of the relevant information about it - largely the role Kate played in it - that it didn't leave me confused about what was going on.
The mystery is the murder of a homeless man. Their primary suspect is another homeless man who goes by the name Brother Erasmus. Erasmus is a Fool - Lee describes the title as "a Jungian archetype, of course, a way of counteracting the tendency of social and religious groups to become concretized" - who only speaks in quotes.
This is where the book falls apart as a mystery. We never know enough about the victim and his circumstances to figure out who really killed him and why. We figure out it was the guy in the car, but there's no way for us to know who that is or what led to the murder.
At the same time, it is very good as a book. Both the author and the character are far more interested in Erasmus than the murder. The real mystery Kate unravels is his identity, which she does somewhat accidentally. She can't get answers she can understand out of him, so she, with Lee's help, starts researching Fools. This leads her to Eve Whitlaw, a visiting professor who is something of an expert. Kate takes Professor Whitlaw to see Erasmus. Professor Whitlaw, of course, recognizes him as David Sawyer from his previous life as a professor himself. Kate gets David to step out of his Erasmus persona and give up the final information they need to catch the murderer, but in the end he returns to the street and his Foolish ways.
Now, it is a good book, and I will read the next one, but I'm hoping the mystery in the next one will be different. Both A Grave Danger and To Play the Fool rely on a ring falling out of a car as a crucial piece of evidence, and both books are about special people who are central to the case. You may remember that I hated the portrayal of Vaun, the artist of the previous book. I didn't have the same feelings about Erasmus, even though Kate has a very similar sense of fascination with him that she did for Vaun. I think there are two things that make this difference. First, we get more of Erasmus as a real person. He isn't the same kind of distant, unknowable being that Vaun was. Even when he's speaking only in quotes, or not at all, he seems human and often seems to be playing. Secondly, Erasmus has much more agency than Vaun did. His demeanor is a choice. Professor Whitlaw says that David was always charismatic, but it's what he does with that charisma, not the charisma itself, that makes Erasmus special.