Royal Sleuth Is a Risky Character in Tudor Tale

Given that the recent movie season brought “Elizabeth” and “Shakespeare in Love,” it’s not surprising that the late-Tudor trend has invaded crime fiction too. Only a few months ago, I reviewed “The Doublet Affair,” in which the sleuth was Queen Elizabeth’s lady in waiting, and frankly, when I came upon Karen Harper’s “The Poyson Garden” (Delacorte Press, 310 pages, $21.95) with Elizabeth herself playing detective, it seemed like the world had turned into a Renaissance Faire.

The impressively researched novel is set in the fall of 1558, before Elizabeth’s accession Nov. 17. The princess is living at Hatfield, guarded by her half-sister Queen Mary’s spies, when she receives a letter from a dying aunt warning that Elizabeth is in danger.

The heiress-apparent blithely dons men’s clothing (a la Gwyneth Paltrow in “Shakespeare”), evades her jailers and rides all night to the aunt’s home. There she learns that a master poisoner has vowed to kill all Boleyns, even the royal one. Already, a band of assassins has shot poison arrows at her cousin Harry, killing his man, and Elizabeth helps exhume the corpse so she can determine what toxic substance was used.

Her Grace is soon breaking into neighboring castles with the aid of actor Ned Topside and Meg Milligrew, an herbalist who could be the princess’ double (guess where that’s going?).

While the author has her poisons and historical details down pat, the book would be much stronger if the future Glorianna played a supporting role. It’s inconceivable that a monarch known for caution would take such risks.

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I blush to confess that I’ve avoided Lillian Jackson Braun’s bestselling “Cat Who . . .” series because I feared the four-legged, bewhiskered Siamese sleuths would be a tad too cute for my taste. But so charmed was I by the 21st installment, “The Cat Who Saw Stars” (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 227 pages, $22.95), that I promptly invested in the back list.

Longtime journalist and inadvertent billionaire Jim Qwilleran lives with his Siamese cats Koko and Yum Yum in the quirky town of Pickaxe-- in Moose County. When an unidentified backpacker disappears, Qwilleran feels a nudge from his oversized mustache, the “source of his hunches,” and decides to spend July at his summer cabin by the lake in nearby Mooseville.

The only big news there are the rumors of UFO sightings, which the Chamber of Commerce encourages, “hoping for an incident that will make the town the Roswell of the North.”

The author brilliantly evokes a sense of place--”Dimsdale Diner (bad coffee, good gossip) . . . abandoned cemetery (poison ivy). . . .” Qwilleran, the most carefree detective since Simenon’s Inspector Maigret, meanders around town buying cinnamon buns, quoting Tennyson at an eclectic boutique, announcing the annual dog-cart races and sampling the lamb osso bucco at Owen’s Restaurant.

After about 50 pages, I was ready to rent a cabin at Top o’ the Dune club just so I could hobnob with the locals, the most colorful folks this side of Lake Woebegone. The plot is minimal, depending more on a convenient deus ex feline than deductive logic, but the book is so engaging you won’t mind.

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Claire Montrose, the heroine of April Henry’s debut novel, “Circles of Confusion” (Harper Collins, 274 pages, $23), has a memorably dreary job: She works in the Department of Motor Vehicles in Portland, Ore., approving vanity license plates. Her monotonous routine gets a much-needed jolt when a great-aunt dies and Claire inherits all the aunt’s worldly possessions--most notably a haunting old oil painting that Claire finds hidden in a suitcase.

Against the advice of her insurance adjuster boyfriend, an obvious loser who Lysols his phone, Claire flies to New York to discover the painting’s worth. Troy Newell, a slick auction house appraiser, maintains it’s a forged Vermeer. Dante Bonner, a sexy artist Claire meets in the Metropolitan museum, thinks it might be by one of Vermeer’s contemporaries. But if the painting isn’t important, why are these two attractive men pursuing Claire? And who ransacked her hotel room?

The book is an easy read and I could forgive the barely credible scenario, even though I believe there should be a 10-year moratorium on Nazi-related plot twists. I could even forgive Claire’s less-than-brilliant observations of Manhattan such as, the women “were dressed all in black except for white athletic shoes and socks.”

But what made me homicidal was the inclusion of the most irritating gimmick since cookbook recipes. “Claire sometimes thought in the shorthand of license plates,” the author notes. To drive the point home, she thoughtfully includes a vanity license-plate puzzler at the end of each chapter. There’s even a key to license-plate terms at the end of the book so a reader can “check your detective work.”

NT2GD.

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The Times reviews mysteries every other week. Next week: Rochelle O’ Gorman on audio books.