What I've been reading

The Mystery of the Sea by Bram Stoker. 300 pages, 1902, Sutton Publishing Limited (1997 edition).

This is a strange book. It begins like you might expect a book by the author of Dracula to begin, but then goes in a wildly different direction. It's not a bad book, but Stoker does try to add some elements that don't seem to make much sense. It's weird.

Even the back of the book adds to the confusion. In my edition, the back copy speaks of Archie Hunter (the narrator) arriving in Aberdeenshire for an annual holiday. He sees a vision of a couple carrying a coffin, and learns shortly afterward that their child has died. He sees a man drown, and a weird old lady, Gormala, tells him that he has the Second Sight. The man, of course, later drowns. The text on the back asks, "Where are these terrible visions, whose force he seems unable to counter, taking him?" To sum up, it reads, "First published in 1902, this story, in which the dead come back to haunt the living, was one of Stoker's most successful after Dracula." From this description, you'd be expecting a creepy, eerie horror story, right? Right?!?!?

Well, that's not what this book is like at all. Early on, it seems to be that way. Hunter arrives at Cruden Bay on the east coast of Scotland, meets the strange woman Gormala, who tells him of the Second Sight and how he can see the horrible fate of people, and then, one night, he sees ghosts rise out of the North Sea and walk along the beach. One of the ghosts, a Spaniard, leads him to an area near his house before disappearing. Later Hunter buys a chest of drawers with some encrypted papers on them. Could it be the Mystery of the Sea?

So far, this has been a pretty interesting story, full of creepiness and mounting horror. Stoker provides wonderful descriptions of the wind-swept coast and the environs, giving a sense of the isolation of the population and how that might lead to, well, madness, which it seems to have in Gormala. Not that she doesn't have the Sight, but she's a bit nutty as well. The march of the ghosts is weird and eerie, and Stoker does a nice job, as many writers used to do, of building tension without indulging in shock tactics. He did this nicely in Dracula, and he does it nicely here.

Suddenly, about 40 pages in, the book's tone shifts, and we get the real story. The encrypted papers in the chest deal with a fabulous treasure, one that was entrusted to a Spaniard (the same one who Hunter saw as a ghost) by the Pope during the days of the Spanish Armada. When that expedition turned out to be ill-fated, the Spaniard buried it in Scotland - near where Hunter lives now - and hoped that he could return at some point to reclaim it. The papers tell where he buried it. Hunter also meets Marjory Drake, a young lady from Chicago, who happens to be a great heiress. Not only that, she provided the United States Navy with its first battleship. Hunter knows none of this until he falls head over heels for Marjory, but once he finds out, the book turns into a spy thriller and leaves horror behind. It's a weird move, because it's somewhat unexpected.

That's not to say the book is ruined. The thriller part of the book is perfectly fine. The story takes place during the Spanish-American War, and Marjory expresses her hatred for the Spanish many times. A descendant of the original Spaniard, Don Bernardino, shows up, and he and our heroes engage in some biting repartee before Bernardino, ever the honorable gentleman, becomes Hunter's ally late in the book. Hunter deciphers the code and he and Marjory find the treasure, in adventurous fashion. Spanish agents are conspiring to kidnap Marjory and hold her for ransom, something the American government does not want. The kidnappers succeed, of course, and Hunter must find her before it's too late! It's all very exciting.

Stoker does a nice job blending in the events that were happening at the time with the narrative. Of course, we're all supposed to know what's happening between the U. S. and Spain, but even if we don't, he does a decent job at least providing some background. The "action" scenes - so to speak - are handled well, too. When Hunter and Marjory descend into the cave to seek the treasure, we get a good sense of them being underground, where a cave-in could kill them easily. When Marjory is kidnapped, Stoker does a good job with the principals searching her out, leading to a big confrontation on a ship. Stoker never actually forgets that Hunter has the Sight, as he uses it occasionally throughout, but after the importance placed upon it in the early going, when he does mention it again, or when Gormala shows up occasionally (as she does), it's kind of weird to read about it, because we're caught up in this treasure hunt. The two different threads of the book - Hunter's "abilities" and how he copes with them, and the treasure hunt/kidnap plot - never really reconcile, but Stoker doesn't try too hard to keep up with how Hunter is able to do all these things. The supernatural aspect of the book doesn't interfere too much with the main plot.

For a book published a little over a hundred years ago, Stoker's attitudes are somewhat surprising. Toward the end, a black man from New Orleans shows up, and there are a lot of racist descriptions of him (he is a villain, to be fair, but he's the only one to be explained as a villain because he's black). Don Bernardino, the Spaniard, also comes off poorly, as Hunter often speculates about how his "blood" has determined how he's acting. Stoker does redeem him a bit at the end, when he acts nobly, but for much of the book, it's uncomfortable reading about him. With Marjory, Stoker does a better job. There is a section in the book where Mrs. Jack, Marjory's nurse and friend, speaks to her about the duties of a wife (she has married Hunter by this time), and it's as pre-feminist as you might expect, and Marjory bows down to Mrs. Jack's infinite wisdom. (I read some of it to Krys, who's as uppity as they come. Mrs. Jack begins: "Marjory, my dear one, when a woman takes a husband she gives up herself. It is right that she should; and it is better too, for us women. How can we look after our mankind, if we're thinking of ourselves all the time!" She goes on for a while, and then says, "But a woman only learns true happiness when she gives up all her own wishes, and thinks only of her husband." That Mrs. Jack - she knows the score!) However, for most of the book, Marjory is an equal partner with Hunter, and they form a nice partnership in searching for the treasure. Yes, Stoker makes sure we know that Marjory is a weak little woman, but for the most part, her portrayal is handled very well. When she is kidnapped, she leaves clues for the rescuers, who remark on how surprising it is that an addled woman would do that. Hunter, for his part, sticks up for her. Marjory's character is very interesting, because Stoker apparently does this often. Witness Mina Harker in Dracula, who is also a strong female character.

There's a lot to like about The Mystery of the Sea. It's a good thriller, and it draws us into the politics of the period, as well as providing some excitement and creepiness. Stoker can be overwrought with his prose, as many writers of the age could be, but the book does sail along relatively well. If you're sick of political thrillers with no meat on them, you might want to check this out, because it has a lot packed into it.

What I've been reading

The Intelligencer by Leslie Silbert. 338 pages, 2004, Washington Square Press.

I know - I don't read a book for months, and now I've burned through two in not very long. And guess what? I'm almost done another one!

I hate pull quotes like the one on the cover of this book: "If you liked The Da Vinci Code, you'll love The Intelligencer." On the back is another one: "Shakespeare in Love meets James Bond." I don't know why - those kind of quotes really bother me. Maybe I'm too snotty.

But this is a perfectly fine book. It's better written than The Da Vinci Code, which doesn't elevate it to fine fiction, I know, since Dan Brown's book was written as if by a ten-year-old. The Intelligencer is more interesting than Brown's book, too, even though it's not as exciting. Brown's chapters are all a few pages punctuated by a cliffhanger. It's a cheap way to keep us turning pages, but it gets annoying after a while. Silbert is a little more interesting in telling a story, so although plenty of chapters end with mini-cliffhangers, they don't feel as shameless as those in The Da Vinci Code. But enough about that book! What about this book?

Well, first of all, it's a thriller with, unfortunately, more than one mystery, which weakens both of them. The first mystery is the better of the two, not only because it deals with Christopher Marlowe, for whom I am a sucker (despite never having read any of his plays or even seen one performed), but because it is more of a mystery. Silbert writes a fictional version of Marlowe's final days, and "solves" the strange circumstances of his death. Marlowe may or may not have been a spy, which allows Silbert to examine briefly the Elizabethan espionage world, another topic I am fiercely interested in (and why I dig Marlowe despite my woeful lack of knowledge about his plays). In the book, Kate Morgan, a private investigator (hmmm ... Kate Morgan/Kit Marlowe?), is hired to decode a book of seemingly random papers from Elizabethan times. The man who hires her, Cidro Medina, is an idle rich Englishman whose contractors found the book while they were building for him. Kate discovers that the book belonged to Thomas Phelippes, a senior member of the Earl of Essex's espionage group in the 1590s, and believes it is part of a collection of papers that Phelippes took from Sir Francis Walsingham, the father of Elizabethan espionage, on Walsingham's death in 1590. As she deciphers the messages, she begins to think that the papers also contain clues to why Christopher Marlowe was killed in May 1593. Marlowe was killed in a tavern, supposedly during a dispute over the bill, but conspiracy theorists since have pooh-poohed this explanation and searched for deeper reasons. If Marlowe was a spy (there is scant evidence that he was, but nothing conclusive), his murder becomes much more sinister, as the men he was with that evening - Robert Poley, Ingram Frizer, and Nicholas Skeres - were all connected to the spy network of either the Earl of Essex or Sir Robert Cecil. Poley was one of the more famous spies of the age. Before she went into the private investigator racket, Kate Morgan was a scholar of Elizabethan spying, so she is perfectly equipped to deal with this. She is being stalked, however, by someone who believes the notes reveal something that Marlowe knew about a high-ranking official in Elizabeth's government that could embarrass the descendants of that official. Prestige among English nobility is still valued highly, and Morgan figures out that the secret could still be damaging to the descendants of the official.

Silbert switches back and forth between the present day and May 1593, and the device works fine. Marlowe goes about his last days, working both sides of the fence (Essex and Cecil were rivals for the position of Secretary of State, and therefore tried to discover secrets about each other as much as they tried to discover plots against England) and uncovering the secret that someone is willing to kill for 400 years later. Meanwhile, Morgan decodes the notebook. However, Silbert throws another plot into the works, and this is where the book goes a bit off track, even though it remains a good read.

Morgan works for a private investigation firm run by an ex-CIA agent. This agent also does some contract work for the government. The firm discovers that a world-famous art dealer who also works in the black market has been meeting with a member of Iranian intelligence. The art dealer has bought something from the Iranian, and Kate is given the job of discovering what it is. This plot twists in and out of the Marlowe one, and it turns out to be far more personal to Kate. She thinks at one point that it would be a remarkable coincidence if the two cases linked up, but they never do. I suppose that's a point for Silbert, to keep them separate when the temptation had to have been there to link them, but it keeps the book somewhat disjointed. Just when the Marlowe plot is taking off, we get the other plot. Just when that is taking off, we're back to Marlowe. I understand that the Marlowe plot just doesn't quite have enough to pack a book, and therefore Silbert needed more in order to have a decent-sized novel, but it's kind of weird and interrupts the flow of the book. Perhaps Silbert could have fleshed out either idea a bit more so that she could have written two books! The other frustrating thing is that the secondary plot, which deals with Kate's life both before she became a private investigator and after, is setting up the next book. That's fine if you want to start a franchise, but shouldn't you make sure that the first one is successful before you start laying the groundwork for a series?

Despite that, this is an entertaining book. It's always interesting to read a thriller that is not a huge conspiracy theory (this is a minor one, and not as far-reaching as many that are imagined) or that doesn't involve religious figures, who are whipping boys for thrillers a lot. It's also interesting to read one in which the fate of the world isn't at stake. I would think that might make it less thrilling, but just because the stakes aren't ridiculously high doesn't mean we can't get invested in the characters and be drawn along by the plot. This is a quick, fun read, with a good pulpy plot, and better written than you might expect. And it has Christopher Marlowe!!!!