Napier, Bill: Splintered Icon

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In the introductory chapters of Bill Napier's Splintered Icon Harry Blake, an antiquarian bookseller, is hired by local aristocrat Sir Toby Tebbit to translate an Elizabethan manuscript that is written in some kind of code. The task would be straightforward enough--and in fact Blake has little trouble deciphering the text when he settles down to the task--but Sir Toby's mysterious behavior suggests there is more to the manuscript than meets the eye. Harry soon discovers, too, that other people are anxious to get their hands on the text.

The manuscript Blake translates turns out to be the journal of a certain James Ogilvie, who left Scotland at the age of fifteen--armed with a pike and a translation of Plutarch--and wound up taking part in an expedition to the New World in 1585. Ogilvie discovers somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that the expedition he's joined has some secret purpose, one which has implications for Harry Blake and the rest of the modern world.

The action of Napier's book alternates between the present and past, with the modern story interrupted by large chunks from the journal, thirty to forty pages at a time. In effect Napier has written two independent stories, as Ogilvie's narrative, in expanded form, could easily stand alone as historical fiction. The historical part of Napier's book never fails to keep readers interested--though one might argue that the story is too polished to be credible as the hurried translation into modern vernacular of an Elizabethan text. The modern-day story that frames Ogilvie's is less consistently successful. It starts very well. Blake's introduction to Sir Toby and the manuscript holds great promise, and a couple of early sentences in the book are gems. ("Mozart took me on a long, slow crawl around Birmingham and on to the M40, and some mid-Atlantic DJ with ten times my income drivelled me towards Oxford.") The book ends pretty well, too, the characters beset by all manner of difficulties and interacting believably with one another--though their solution of the riddle that Ogilvie's journal poses comes too easily. In the middle chapters, however, the book slows, while Blake and Zola Khan, a historian Harry's persuaded to help him, discuss the secret purpose of Ogilvie's expedition and drop erudite references to intellectual and religious history. Their interaction here often does not seem natural. Perhaps the middle section of the book should have been expanded, with more action scenes interjected among the expository passages to keep things interesting.

But it is worth reading through the hump because, as I said, the book gets better. Fans of literate historical thrillers should give this one a look.