Fool is Christopher Moore's retelling of King Lear, told from the per­spec­tive of — who else — Lear’s court jester. The jester, who Moore names Pocket, may be a fool by trade, but he is cer­tainly no dunce. He has free run of the cas­tle, friends in both high and low places, and with Lear’s pro­tec­tion is free to make fun of who­ever he wants. He is also very close to Lear’s daugh­ters Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia. Pocket is most loyal to Lear and Cordelia, and through­out Moore’s take on the tale, it is his behind-the-scenes schem­ing that serves to pro­tect their inter­ests and lives.

Fool opens with a tongue-in-cheek warn­ing from Moore that “This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gra­tu­itous shag­ging, mur­der, spank­ing, maim­ing, trea­son, and hereto­fore unex­plored heights of vul­gar­ity and pro­fan­ity…” In other words, Shake­speare prob­a­bly would’ve loved it. Moore acknowl­edges that tak­ing on one of the most famous plays by the best known Eng­lish writer of all time was a daunt­ing task. But, then again, this is from the same man who wrote a novel about the lost years in the life of Jesus (and his best friend Biff). He retains basi­cally all of Lear’s com­plex plot, although he of course makes Pocket and his machi­na­tions more inte­gral to that plot. The end­ing is dif­fer­ent, though — you can’t have a comic novel with a truly tragic fin­ish. Moore also brings in dia­log and char­ac­ters from other of the Bard’s plays, most notably the trio of witches from Mac­beth.

I’ve read all of Christo­pher Moore’s nov­els, and I think that Fool is one of his best. I read most of the book dur­ing a stint in a pit orches­tra (coin­ci­den­tally for a pro­duc­tion of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Yeomen of the Guard, which also fea­tures a jester), and I had to be very care­ful not to laugh out loud at inop­por­tune moments. A famil­iar­ity with King Lear is help­ful but by no means a require­ment for read­ing Fool; read­ing the syn­op­sis on Wikipedia is prob­a­bly suf­fi­cient prepa­ra­tion. I can’t rec­om­mend Moore’s writ­ing highly enough, for those read­ers who enjoy a twisted sense of humor. Start with Fool, Lamb, or Blood­suck­ing Fiends: A Love Story, then check out some of his other novels.

The Bro­ken Win­dow pits Lin­coln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs against a mys­te­ri­ous and devi­ous crim­i­nal whose M.O. is to care­fully frame inno­cent peo­ple for his thefts and mur­ders. His frame jobs are so per­fect that he has gone com­pletely unde­tected for years. His exis­tence only comes to light when Rhyme real­izes that the evi­dence in a mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion is too per­fect. Soon, the police find a num­ber of past cases that bear the same signs, in which inno­cent peo­ple may very well have been convicted.

With very lit­tle to go on, Rhyme et. al. set about learn­ing more about their quarry. But, he always seems to be a cou­ple of steps ahead of them; the closer they get, the more he seems to know about them and their plans. It quickly becomes appar­ent that this crim­i­nal can some­how find out any­thing about any­one — and in his hands, knowl­edge is cer­tainly power.

As is his wont, Deaver packs plenty of twists and red her­rings into his tale. In his last Rhyme/Sachs novel, The Cold Moon, the detec­tives were too good at antic­i­pat­ing the twists, which sucked some of the sus­pense out of the book. I think that Deaver han­dles his sur­prises bet­ter in The Bro­ken Win­dow; he keeps both the reader and the pro­tag­o­nists guess­ing. I also like that Deaver basi­cally sticks to a sin­gle plot in this book, rather than the inter­weav­ing of numer­ous sub­plots that he uses in some ear­lier books.

The only annoy­ance this novel holds for me has to do with Deaver’s dis­cus­sions of com­put­ers (which play a cen­tral role). His use of tech­no­log­i­cal terms and jar­gon feels slightly off in places, although he has improved a great deal sine The Blue Nowhere, his hacker mys­tery. This is a minor fault, though, and prob­a­bly wouldn’t bother any­one who isn’t some­what of a com­puter nerd.

Edward Wozny is a hot­shot New York invest­ment banker who is about to assume a pres­ti­gious posi­tion at his firm’s Lon­don branch. At the begin­ning of what is sup­posed to be two weeks off to pre­pare for his move, Edward is sum­moned to an apart­ment owned by impor­tant clients of his com­pany — a British duke and duchess. He is charged with cat­a­loging their library, which had been sent to the United States for safe keep­ing dur­ing World War II and then promptly for­got­ten about. Edward is told to keep a sharp eye out among the old tomes for a cer­tain book by Ger­vase of Langford.

Lack­ing any train­ing in librar­i­an­ship or par­tic­u­lar inter­est in old books, Edward is ini­tially annoyed, but finds him­self strangely drawn in fol­low­ing an after­noon with the dusty vol­umes. He vis­its the Chenoweth Rare Book and Man­u­script Repos­i­tory, where he serendip­i­tously encoun­ters Mar­garet Napier, a Ger­vase of Lang­ford scholar. Although she (and most every­one else) con­sid­ers the book Edward is look­ing for to be a myth, she agrees to help with the cataloging.

Mean­while, a pro­gram­mer friend gives Edward a copy of a com­puter game called MOMUS. The game is hyper-real and some­what enig­matic; no one knows exactly who cre­ated it. Edward quickly becomes immersed in MOMUS, spend­ing more and more of his free time in the vir­tual world.

While exam­in­ing the con­tents of the library, Mar­garet becomes increas­ingly con­vinced that the mys­te­ri­ous book does exist, and was once a part of the col­lec­tion. She and Edward embark on a hunt to find the book. They dig up infor­ma­tion about the library’s his­tory, sneak into the Chenoweth’s mas­sive archival facil­ity, and unwit­tingly become embroiled in the schemes of British nobles. As they pro­ceed, Edward begins to notice eerie sim­i­lar­i­ties between MOMUS and their real-life quest.

The premise of Codex, with its for­got­ten library, myth­i­cal man­u­script, and eerily rel­e­vant com­puter game has poten­tial. But, the book itself turns out to be some­what lack­lus­ter and dis­ap­point­ing. MOMUS is set up to have impor­tant par­al­lels to the search for the Ger­vase book, but there are only ever a few of these. The whole com­puter game suplot seems under­de­vel­oped and out of place. Also, the book’s end­ing isn’t very sat­is­fy­ing. The plot gets increas­ingly com­plex, then just seems to peter out.

A cou­ple of errors (that should have been caught by an edi­tor) early in the book soured my opin­ion some­what, as well. One is a ref­er­ence to tree sap turn­ing into amber over a few thou­sand years (amber is formed from tree resin over mil­lions of years). The other is a men­tion of illus­tra­tions of “vivi­sected corpses” (“vivi-” mean­ing “liv­ing”; a corpse can be dis­sected, but not vivisected).

Codex is okay, not great. If you find it (as I did) at a used book sale for a buck and want a quick, largely mind­less read, go for it. Oth­er­wise, don’t bother.