A Review of What Time Devours
Talkers are not good doers... Unless they are Shakespeare professors in A. J. Hartley's What Time Devours, in which case they may be cold blooded serial killers for the sake of a dubious lost manuscript they have never seen... Or are they?...
Hartley's latest book is a thriller/mystery from Berkeley Books and has a Shakespearean theme and locale, which is why it is being reviewed here. It is fun, intelligent, and engaging. [Spoiler warning: I am not going to reveal the denouement of the plot or the solution to the murders, but those who want the freshest experience should stop reading here, read the book, and return.]
The principal character, Thomas Knight, a failed Shakespearean doctoral candidate who has found his niche ten years later--or has he?--as a high school English teacher who spends his summers, at least the summer in question here, pursuing the killer of a former student who was the literary agent of a failed English (the country) mystery writer, part of a duo--and not the smartest part--who brought him (the literary agent) a manuscript copy of Love's Labour's Won, which has returned to the state in which it was last heard of in 1653, that is, missing. If you followed that tortured sentence, you will be right at home with this plot. It is a treasure hunt through London, Stratford, the French champagne country (mostly underground), back to Stratford, with lots of long distance calls to his (Knight's) estranged but rekindling wife in Japan, his archaeologist friend in Machu Picchu and a down home lady cop back in sweet home Chicago, where the story begins. It is long on thriller, a la Chrichton, and somewhat short on mystery, a la any classic "by the game" mystery writer you would care to name. If you like thrillers, especially thrillers that feature rather diffident and intelligent, self-questioning, real people, you will like this one. Though the body count predictably piles up as the hunt proceeds, and our hero suffers one injury and insult after another, Hartley takes us right along with him, buffering us from the frankly artificial nature of the events he narrates through a sympathetic engagement with a well individualized character. Thomas Knight is someone we recognize, if his actions aren't.
I'm not sure what it is about English teachers--and Hartley is one in real life, according to his web site--but they can't seem to get over the idea that a missing Shakespeare play makes for a knockout mystery plot. So far, I haven't seen it. This book succeeds in spite of its trite plot devices. It's action depends uncomfortably on the barest hunches and far-fetched chance occurrences. Our hero shows up at the right places to maximize suspense and, yes, thrills, I suppose, but by means of pretty heavy handed authorial manipulation. I'm not sure that is really a criticism of a book in this genre, since one of its points, I suppose, is to produce thrills, and readers of said seem not to be overly fussy about the canons of verisimilitude. What makes this particular thriller interesting, however, is its sub-text, which gives Hartley the opportunity to do some serious writing. I'm referring to Thomas Knight's relationship with Kumi, his estranged wife, and, in fact, his somewhat complicated relationship with every female he meets in the book. The writing is sensitive, edgy, and more nuanced than one expects to find in a thriller.
My primary criticism of the book is its heavy dependence on very flimsy chance occurrences, and also some rather unexpected and morally questionable breaking and entering Knight does which sets him on the path to pursuing the lost manuscript and, by the way, solving a decades old murder/tragedy. As a plot, the whole thing does not hang together tightly or, organically, as they say, but it works well enough for this genre. It is a testament to the deft characterization Hartley does with Knight that, in fact, we do feel he has done something "out of character" when he commits his unjustified breaking and entering (not once, but twice). The superstructure of the plot is a little too heavy and diverse to maintain believability, but, as I say, we don't really mind that much because Knight and Kumi and their relationship is interesting enough to keep us turning pages, not to mention the repeated reference to the 80's rock band XTC, who play a much larger role than you might imagine possible, even if they are one of the things devoured by time (hint: click here if you want to see the album cover of English Settlement, but you will have had to read the book, or known the band, for this to make any sense).
On beginning the book one gets a little nervous with the several references to Sherlock Holmes, but it goes away soon enough. There are several preliminary, un-Holmesian action scenes that convince us that this play, in spite of the wacky notion about a lost play and comparisons to Doyle's "The Naval Treaty," is not going to be headquartered on Baker street. At least Hartley also (and thankfully) does away with the Oxford-wrote-Shakespeare nonsense early and often, and the facts about Love's Labour's Won are true enough as stated (though, although it has nothing to do with the plot, could be another name for Much Ado, something that never gets mentioned--I'm just saying), but the real introduction of the Shakespearean theme seems to be just a really good excuse to satirize the Shakespearean "scholars" who stalk these pages, one of whom, as I say above, may be a cold blooded serial killer...
All right, enough. The best parts are Thomas' long distance phone conversations with Kumi, and his self doubts and recriminations following hard upon. The story of their growing love and mutual need as the book progresses is its real strength. There is certainly interest in the book for Shakespeareans. We get a number of quotes, and not just as chapter superscriptions, and several semi-serious discussions along scholarly lines. We also get a spirited criticism of poorly done thrillers, the Da Vinci Code in particular: "'Fiction is fiction, of course, which is what makes it fun, but there's a point at which the pretense that fiction is really fact goes beyond marketing and becomes merely...' He [Ron Hazlehust, a Westminster verger, one of the book's jewels] sought for the word. 'Deception?' Thomas supplied." (p.103). Fair enough. Hartley does not practice the truly deep and dishonest deception of The Da Vinci Code in this book. His deceptions are the ones common to most popular fiction writers, a too heavy dependence on the wildly unlikely. In brief, for a high school English teacher, his hero sure gets knocked about a lot, and in some pretty odd places. At the same time he is exercising a realistic sense of situational criticism ("...the pointlessness and stupidity of the whole thing weighed on him [Thomas]. He was an amateur, blundering around as corpses accumulated in his wake" (p.226)), he doesn't seem to hear what he is saying, and in the worst tradition of these sorts of books, can, within minutes of the gruesome slashing death of a fellow human, be utterly absorbed in the ridiculous (and improbably forthcoming) details of the disappearance of an old play. It is true we are not going to read a book like this for its scholarly arguments, but could we have a little more respect for the sanctity of life? I wonder. There is a bit of a psychic disconnect between the too frequent, too under appreciated deaths of the supporting cast, while showing great sensitivity toward the inner emotional lives of Thomas and Kumi. A little too cinema, if you will.
This book is worth reading, especially if you can concentrate on the
characters and forget the lost play and some of the very far fetched
circumstances involved in the quest story, but it is not destined to be a
well remembered book. Hartley could write one, but this is not it. I give
it 3 1/2 diamonds out of five, but waiver a bit in doing so. Hartley is
also the author of
On the Fifth Day,
The Mask of Atreus, and the forthcoming (March, 09),
Act of Will, which I look forward to reading, based on the promise
shown in What Time Devours.
