The second in King’s Kate Martinelli series. Same good writing and characters but I didn’t like this one as much. The historical context for this one is the whole concept of “the Fool” as in the King’s Fool — the one person who could be honest with the King and who adopted a jester’s style of witlessness while speaking deep truths. It’s a concept that I find very interesting, but (IMHO) too much of the book was devoted to academic discussions about the Fool in history and whether or not a man of interest in a strange homicide was truly a Fool or just playing one.
Aside from that, the story was interesting — an impromptu cremation of a body in Golden Gate Park by a group of homeless people, sparks (pun intended) a Homicide investigation and all fingers point to a monkish “Brother Erasmus” as a person of interest. But Erasmus can’t or won’t speak in coherent sentences and instead speaks only in quotations (mostly biblical and Shakespearean). Makes for interesting interrogation.
Books to look forward to ... 