Shadow Queen

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A reincarnated queen gets a taste of 20th-century crime in Gibbs's ( Dead Run ) intrinsically flawed mystery. In a gimmick that has no apparent bearing on the plot, teenager Marie Stuart McIntyre is the ``hostess'' for the soul of Mary Queen of Scots. For years Marie's mother, Flora, has force-fed her books about English history. (This device, too, seems unnecessary, as the queen within Marie, speaking in antique idioms, frquently delivers orations on the House of Stuart.) Flora, preparing Marie to fulfill her destiny, contacts the author of one of those books, Patrick Sarsfield, claiming to possess the so-called Casket Letters, previously presumed to have been forgeries but which, if true, would alter British history. Sarsfield's publisher hires a graphologist to appraise the epistles. Covert agents of the Irish Republican Army and the House of Windsor are involved, however, and the agenda here runs to thefts, betrayals, challenges to the British throne, kidnapping and a murder. But the pointlessness of Marie's possession precludes any narrative tension. (Jan.)