This disappointing novel is another book I can bury in my “not very good, but at least I got the e-book free” file.

I was drawn to Stewart Buettner’s The Shakespeare Manuscript because of the remarkable (though surely coincidental) parallels between it and my own novel, Blood and Judgment.

Both books deal with the discovery of a lost Hamlet manuscript—in my story an original draft, in this one an original of a lost prequel, “Hamlet Part I”.

Both involve the relationships and frictions involved in the production of a play—in my case an amateur company, in this case a professional one.

My book, however, was a fantasy. This book is… I’m not sure. It seems to be a sort of mystery, but the stakes are never raised high enough to build much tension, and the only death that occurs turns out to be natural.

And that’s the problem with The Shakespeare Manuscript. A lot of people run about doing things and irritating each other, but there’s no real dramatic arc.

The book starts with a New York rare books dealer, Miles Oliphant, on a trip to England, being mugged. While he’s unconscious in hospital and still unidentified by the police, a box of manuscripts he sent home is opened by his daughter, April. She finds a manuscript among the papers which, she soon realizes, looks very like a lost play of Shakespeare’s, in his own hand.

Impulsively she sends one sheet to a handwriting expert for verification, and shows the rest to her friend Avery LeMaster, a prominent theatrical director. Avery is immediately convinced the manuscript is genuine, and sets about staging the thing. Then follows a lot of disorganized action, as actors step on each other’s toes, the theater’s manager tries not to lose their lease, and the manuscript gets stolen.

There’s the makings of a good story here, but Buettner fails to pull it together. Too many plot lines go nowhere. Characters seem to change their actions, not out of human complexity, but just to suit the needs of the plot. One particularly irritating habit of the author’s is to skip over major scenes of confrontation, preferring to tell us about them afterwards. That’s consistent with classical drama, but there’s no tension even in the exposition. For instance, at one point April (who suffers from agoraphobia but has tentatively agreed to play Ophelia) flatly declares she’s leaving the production. In the next chapter everything is going on as before, and we’re informed, almost as an aside, that someone talked her into changing her mind.

That’s not good storytelling.

Another similarity to my own book is the author’s occasional attempts to write dialogue in Shakespeare’s style. I may flatter myself, but I’m pretty sure I did it better.

Hamlet. Then let me happily unfire those flames

Though that runs counter to my own desires

For hide I cannot their excess from you

And do not wish to as you are so dear.

Ophelia. Then you too feel their heat, ’tis not just me?

The prose in the main narrative isn’t any better.

“I was so busy, I guess, teaching, directing, trying to do a little writing, our marriage simply imploded from inertia.” (Imploded from inertia?)

[At a point when April has hidden under a bed:] April’s profile began to rise slowly from the wax of the floor.

Try to picture that image.

All in all, a disappointing book. Worth the price, I guess, if you can download it free, and you don’t put a high value on your time.