What Time Devours

by: A. J. Hartley

Published by: Berkley Books

Reviewed by C. L. Rossman

When high school teacher Thomas Knight sees a dead woman pressed against his kitchen window, he knows he’s in for trouble. What he doesn’t know is that the trouble will involve a legendary play from Shakespeare, “Love’s Labour’s Won,” only rumored to exist and thought to have been lost for centuries. Nor does he know that his search will take him to the United Kingdom, to the very soil where the old Globe Theatre stood–and barely a step ahead of a murderer who does not want him to succeed.

At the same time, Knight tries to reconcile after ten years of separation with his estranged Japanese wife, and also unravel clues in his hunt for the play.

A good writer can give you an interesting plot and reasonably sympathetic characters, a very good one can make that plot an obsession and those characters compelling–and this is what we get from Hartley. The best writing is that which least interferes with the reader’s plunge into the story–and we have that here.

It’s always a surprise and delight to discover a terrific new talent, someone whose works you want to recommend and better yet, read them yourself, so it’s a great pleasure to read and recommend this book.

Hartley, originally a British subject, and a graduate at Boston U, has been teaching Shakespeare for 12 years. It looks like he has the talent that can endure. This is a smart, exciting thriller, and after reading it, I wanted to look at his first two books, On the Fifth Day, and The Mask of Atreus.

He’s got our attention with a book that’s better than just a copy of The Da Vinci Code. Now let’s see what he can do with the next one. He’s already a New York Times bestselling author.

Armchair Interviews says this book is a rare achievement, an intelligent thriller, and it will whet your appetite for the author’s other works.

Author’s Web site: http://www.AJHartley.net