Book Review: The Reckoning by MJ Trow

I may as well say it. I really, really wanted to like MJ Trow’s The Reckoning, but I’m sorry. I didn’t. 

I suspect the problem is me and my expectations rather than the book. I love a good historical crime novel with a real historical figure as a detective, and what could be better than that character being my literary hero? Genius playwright Christopher Marlowe, trying to solve the murder of an actor, with lashings of secret agents and nobody quite what they seem

That’s where it went wrong for me. The Christopher Marlowe of this book — a reasonable man, loved by women, children and animals, everyone in fact except for the many baddies — could barely be more different to the character as he’s represented by historians. Having begun reading with an idea of a character I couldn’t buy into one who is so different to what I was expecting.

Drawing a character to your own specifications is fair enough of course. I don’t mind a bit of flexibility in historical fiction. In this book it wasn’t just the character of Marlowe but there was much more there was too much of it for me, too much playing fast and loose with what we know is the truth. (And — no spoilers — another problem with this type of book is that we know how it’s going to end.) I found it particularly irritating, for example, that there were constant references to lines written after Marlowe’s death — although I do understand that they were intended to be funny. I just felt that this running gag was a bit clumsy and, like much of the rest of the humour in the book, felt very dated, reminiscent of the 1960s novels of Caryl Brahms and SJ Simon 

There was much to like. The historical detail was great and the writing very good, though I also thought it was quite light in terms of the actual plot. I the end I rather stopped reading it as a detective novel and the how and why of the actual murders came very much second to the espionage subplot — and, I have to say, the unsurprising ending was clearly done. I’m sure many people will enjoy it rather more than I did. 

Thanks to Netgalley and Severn House for a copy of this book in return for an honest review.