My biggest issue with this book probably comes from the blurb. It paints the picture of someone going through London’s seediest sides to find a lost manuscript. But this is not what he book is about at all. It takes maybe 15 pages for the manuscript to be stolen, Richard to be accused and for

it to be returned

. For an over 300 page book, there’s a lot else that this book is about. Unfortunately, it wasn’t purchased for what it is actually about but for the missing tale that I am so frustrated I didn’t get.

Bernard Cornwall is not a household name for nothing. His writing is flawless and the picture he paints of Elizabethan England and the play houses and their rivalry is vivid and clearly much researched. But the story did not flow as I wanted it to. It did not have the subterfuge I wanted it to. It didn’t have the plot I wanted it to. It felt like a history lesson of the theatre wrapped in the frills of putting on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And the main character is too unlikeable to make than tenable.

It’s not quite enough to put me off Cornwall himself as an author and I would give another book of his a try, but I won’t be recommending this one.