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Title: The Twylight Tower by Karen Harper ISBN: 0-440-23592-8 Publisher: Dell Publishing Company Pub. Date: 29 January, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (5 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Twlight of a Series
Comment: This is Karen Harper's third outing in her Elizabeth I mystery series. Verily forsooth, "The Twylight Tower" doesn't live up to its immediate predecessor, "The Tidal Poole." Despite concerns about some of Harper's historical inaccuracies, I think the main problem with the novel was a surfeit of history. Harper has reached an historical point where Elizabeth's life and activities are too well-documented to make her a credible amateur detective. In the previous novels, Elizabeth was still the despised and ignored half-sister. While the biographical outline of her early life is known, an author like Harper could exercise wide creative latitude as to how Princess Elizabeth spent her time.
This is not the case in "The Twylight Tower." As the series proceeds chronologically, Elizabeth is now Queen of England. Harper doesn't seem able to devise a plausible mystery within the confines of the better known historical details of Elizabeth's summer at Windsor in 1560. For instance, the significance of her romance with Robert Dudley is much studied, as are the circumstances of the death his wife, Amy Robsart; the machinations of the Spanish ambassador; and the political fortunes of Robert Cecil, the Lord Chancellor.
In addition, Harper seems to be losing interest in the minor characters who comprise the Privy Plot Council. This time around Meg is portrayed as a sniveling liar, Burleigh a drunk, and Ned is barely seen at all. Too bad. These characters helped make the previous books interesting.
Rating: 2
Summary: Unforgivable Error, Ms. Harper!
Comment: This series is becoming tiresome. Other reviewers have commented on the soap opera romance aspect of this novel, so I'd like to direct my criticism to Harper's knowledge of history, or lack thereof, and to her style.
First, her history. The first novel in the series was bad enough, with not the slightest mention that Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth's mother, was herself a Butler of Ormond! The princess's erstwhile murderer would, therefore, have been a cousin, and letting the reader in on their relationship would have deepened and enriched the story.
But that's a mere quibble. On page 238 of THE TWYLIGHT TOWER, Elizabeth says, in reference to the founding of the Order of the Garter, "I'll tell you one thing about King Edward III, who began this nearly six centuries ago. . ."
As a student of the Fourteenth Century, I gritted my teeth on reading so crass a mistake. The Garter's founding is sightly uncertain, but the Order was founded (indeed, by Edward III) some time between 1344 and 1348. Now, simple subtraction from 1560 gives us a difference of little more than 200 years, not 600. I thought the error might be a strange typo--perhaps originally "200" mistakenly typed as "600" and then editorially spelled out. But it is Harper's mistake. Two pages later Robert Dudley (perhaps addled by lust!) refers to the founding as occurring "hundreds of years ago."
At that point I felt like throwing an ink bottle at Karen Harper. No one so ignorant of history should be writing a novel purporting to be "historical."
As for style, Harper is too often guilty of indulging in the "forsooth school" of dialogue (Josephine Tey's term), yet is maddeningly inconsistent in her use of historically correct grammar. Since I believe that she is an English teacher, she is surprisingly ignorant of extant older grammatical forms. Here lapses are manifold, and include using the indicative rather than the subjunctive mode ("if it was" rather than "if it were") and "like" instead of "such as" in a phrase containing a verb.
Picky, perhaps, but such Americanisms are quite destructive of the novel's verisimiliatude. Are her characters Elizabethans--or modern Americans speaking U.S. English?
My recommendation is to avoid these novels...
Rating: 3
Summary: Good history, average mystery
Comment: Elizabeth is newly Queen and England is rocked by intrigue. The French and Spanish conspire to push their candidates for Elizabeth's husband--or her replacement. In England itself, the powerful jockey for their place in Elizabeth's court. Yet England is lately recovered from the civil wars that showed that any man with power could seize the crown. Can Elizabeth stand against all?
In THE TWYLIGHT TOWER, Karen Harper presents Elizabeth with an additional problem--murder. While at first the deaths appear accidental, they soon resolve to a major threat to Elizabeth herself. Elizabeth's privy council wait for her orders to swing into action (this is the third of Harper's Elizabeth mysteries after all so they know how to sidekick), but Elizabeth is too busy being enamored of Lord Robert to have much time for crime solving.
That, in a nutshell is the problem with the book. The protagonist of a mystery is too busy to solve the mystery until the very end. Like most mystery readers, I prefer to see the protagonist struggle, seeking resolution in a number of ways. Waiting through two hundred pages for the protagonist to get around to it isn't what I want.
I enjoyed THE TWYLIGHT TOWER and I think the concept of Elizabeth as detective is delightful. As a mystery, I found it merely average, however.
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Title: The Tidal Poole (Elizabeth I Mysteries (Dell)) by Karen Harper ISBN: 0440225930 Publisher: Dell Publishing Company Pub. Date: 06 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: The Thorne Maze (Elizabeth I Mystery) by Karen Harper ISBN: 0312993498 Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur Pub. Date: 19 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Poyson Garden: An Elizabethan I Mystery (Elizabeth I Mysteries (Paperback)) by Karen Harper ISBN: 0440225922 Publisher: Dell Publishing Company Pub. Date: 11 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Queene's Christmas: An Elizabeth I Mystery by Karen Harper ISBN: 0312301758 Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: TO SHIELD THE QUEEN (Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court (Paperback)) by Fiona Buckley ISBN: 0671015311 Publisher: Pocket Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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