Not worth the repreve.

In theory, I ought to find The Queen's Fool absolutely riveting: set in the volatile, intrigue-ridden England of Edward VI and Mary I, the story encompasses war, religious upheaval, sex, heartbreak, diplomacy and political maneuvering of the highest order. The title character, Hannah Green, is herself playing a role, hiding her Jewish faith and her sex as she and her father try to make a new life in England after fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. Hannah's reputation for divining the future lands her squarely into the center of the royal court, required to spy for Lord Robert Dudley, for whom she has more than a passing fancy. When Mary ascends the throne, Hannah finds herself drawn to the queen's strong character, yet endangered by the same woman's determination to rid England of its Protestant faith. Torn between a safe, but mundane life with her betrothed and the intrigues of the court, Hannah's fateful decisions place her at the very center of the turbulent events surrounding her.

And yet...

Honestly, I just couldn't get into The Queen's Fool. I tried (it's a 500 page book, and I stuck with it to the end), but Philippa Gregory's epic of Tudor intrigue just never really came to life for me. The whole purpose of a historical novel is to recreate a particular world, mixing the well-known figures with characters of the author's imagination. It's especially tricky with characters that are as well-known as Elizabeth I and her fractious family, and to her credit, Gregory has done her homework regarding history and life at the court. But they all still feel somehow...flat, I guess would be the best way to describe it. I had read another of Gregory's novels, The Virgin's Lover, a few years ago, and the feeling was the same. Another issue centers on Hannah. Gregory goes to almost absurd lengths to place Hannah at the center of the action, undermining any sense of belief in her character. Was it possible for someone like Hannah to witness Elizabeth's trysts with Thomas Seymour, be summoned to face charges of heresy and be present at the fall of Calais? It might give Gregory the opportunity to describe those events, but it doesn't work as fiction.

The Queen's Fool is part of Gregory's retelling of the Tudor era, the latest of which is The Boleyn Inheritance. Gregory's books always seem to hit the bestseller lists, which isn't surprising given their emphasis on intrigue and scheming. In spite of Gregory's efforts, though, her Elizabethan world still remains impervious.

Shock and awe through an objective lens.

God knows there are plenty of books out there on the subject of Iraq and the mess we're currently in. I wasn't really looking for a book about the war until I happened to spot Anne Garrels' account of the buildup and opening days of the war come across the circulation desk. I had remembered catching some of Garrels' reports from the battlefield on NPR and being impressed with her work, but I was a little hesitant about picking up a work that was probably outdated.

But after four years of war, reading Naked in Baghdad adds a touch of clarity. A veteran of numerous war zones over the course of her nearly 30 years as a journalist, Garrels knows how to write compelling, gripping reports while keeping a clear, objective eye on the facts. Naked begins in the fall of 2002, as UN inspectors are still trying to determine what sort of weapons Saddam may or may not have and ends in May 2003, around the time of "Mission Accomplished". Arriving in Baghdad, Garrels uses her status as a woman and a correspondent for the relatively-under-the-radar NPR to gain access to the parts of Baghdad where she can get a real sense for how Iraqis feel about their leader. Or so the idea goes. Garrels spends as much time trying to twart the attempts by the Iraqi government to manipulate the news that much of Naked reads as a manual for doing journalism with uncooperative authorities as it does a narrative of a city preparing for war. As the rhetoric and violence escalates, Garrels finds herself part of a dwindling press corps, relying more on her own wits and the bravery of her driver, Amer, in getting the real story. In this sense, Garrels succeeds: the portrait that she creates is an Iraq filled with tension and uncertainty, voicing concerns that will become a familiar refrain over the next few years.

Garrels' Baghdad account in supplemented by email bulletins written by her husband Vint Lawrence, to family and friends. Lawrence is also a talented writer, and his perspective of a husband waiting on the homefront for a loved one provides an illuminating counterpoint to Garrels' war zone experiences. Still, if given a choice between the emails and more of Garrels' reporting, I would go with the latter. Garrels' gutsy reporting in the face of real danger and her insightful portrayal of a complex city makes Naked in Baghdad as relevent to today's Iraq as the Iraq of four years ago.

Neither time nor patience.

Frustration, thy name is Elizabeth George. With her lush writing, English settings, a complicated lead character with an abrasive partner and thorny mysteries, I should be devouring all of her mysteries. Instead, I find myself picking up her books with the anxious hope that I won't have to force myself through to the conclusion, just to find out who commited the crime.

Okay, perhaps we ought to begin at the beginning. Elizabeth George is best known as the author of the Inspector Thomas Lynley mysteries, a series that, since A Great Deliverance was published in 1988, has grown to 14 titles. A perennial best-seller, the Lynley mysteries have gotten a boost since 2002, when Mystery! began airing its own series based on the books. After I saw and thoroughly enjoyed the series, I turned to the books.

George bases her mysteries in the conflicts in and around her central investigator, D.I. Thomas Lynley of Scotland Yard, who also happens to be the eighth Earl of Asherton. Uncomfortable with his status, yet unable to escape his own sense of duty afforded by his priviledged birth, Lynley is a study of inner turmoil, bordering on angst. Lynley's foil is his working class partner, Barbara Havers, stubborn and headstrong, yet with vulnerabilities of her own that she hides behind a shell so thick that she doesn't even acknowledge it to herself. This pairing gives George enough material to work with to drive multidimentioned mysteries full of ethical and moral dilemmas.

When George sticks to the conflict between Lynley and Havers and the issues immediately surrounding the mystery at hand, her formula works--even for the 400 or so pages that most of her mysteries run. But too often, George turns to outside characters that are often only connected to the plot by the thinnest of threads (and usually turn out to be annoying to boot). Along with an unfortunate tendency towards the melodramatic, George's novels sometimes come off as bloated soap operas.

Without all the window dressing and emoting, George's mysteries at their core are tightly constructed crimes, without any clear-cut moral answers. The last of her books I read, Missing Joseph, had all sort of juicy moral dilemmas that remained unsolved at the conclusion. But I had to slog through 400 pages before the mystery actually took center stage. Until George returns to focus on her central characters, I won't be continuing with this series.