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Mysteries Follow Shakespearean Theory

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By KATHY L. GREENBERG

Published: September 30, 2007

'Interred With Their Bones,' by Jennifer Lee Carrell (Dutton, $26)

'Interred With Their Bones' is a multilayered thriller and likely the best debut novel this year.

Kate Shelton is the newly appointed director of London's Globe Theatre, the historical home to William Shakespeare's plays. Her former mentor and fellow Shakespeare scholar, Roz Howard, unexpectedly appears the day before Kate's production of 'Hamlet' opens. She hands Kate a small, wrapped box and asks to meet her later that evening, presumably to reveal a major discovery.

While waiting for Roz, Kate sees smoke rising above the city. Instinctively, she hurries to the theater, where she finds the Globe burned to the ground and her friend dead. She realizes these events parallel the original theater's destructive fire in 1613 and the method Shakespeare invented to kill Hamlet's father.

Kate is sure that someone is staging real-life Shakespearean dramas that relate to the contents of the box Roz gave her. So begins a frantic flight along trails littered with dead bodies and mysteries whose clues are buried in a clever game of wordplay.

Carrell masterfully replicates the timeless, universal themes in Shakespeare's plays. She moves deftly between allusion and fact, blending the two into a complex but engrossing story that satisfies from start to finish.

Kathy L. Greenberg of Tampa is a freelance writer.

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