Book review: 'Haunt Me Still,' by Jennifer Lee Carrell

HAUNT ME STILL

By Jennifer Lee Carrell

Dutton. 406 pp. $25.95

Jennifer Lee Carrell is a Shakespearean scholar, and "Haunt Me Still" is her second novel to center on one of the Bard's plays. In the first, "Interred With Their Bones," Carrell's heroine, theater director Kate Stanley, pursued a lost manuscript. In this one, Kate is caught up in the mysteries surrounding the supposedly cursed "Macbeth." "Haunt Me Still" can be called a literary thriller, but it suffers from no shortage of gore, with a body count to rival that of "Macbeth" itself or even the final-act carnage of "Hamlet."

At the outset, Kate meets Lady Nairn, once a celebrated actress and now the widow of a Scottish nobleman, who lives in Dunsinane, the castle once inhabited by the historical King Macbeth. Lady Nairn wants Kate to direct a production of "Macbeth." As incentive, she tells Kate that she has evidence that an earlier version of the play exists. Together, they can find the earlier play and produce it, and make theatrical history.

As Carrell tells it, Macbeth was a good king, not the monster in the play, and there's nothing in the record to suggest that Lady Macbeth was the evil genius that Shakespeare presents. In Carrell's version, there was a real-life Scottish countess (and witch) named Elizabeth Stewart, who in 1586 urged her husband to kill the teenaged King James of Scotland (later England's James I). Indeed, Carrell has Shakespeare, as a 25-year-old actor, visit Scotland, where he is seduced by this woman, learns of her murderous plot against a king and even glimpses some of the witchcraft that later became central to his "Macbeth."

The problem is that while Kate and Lady Nairn want the original "Macbeth" for its literary importance, there are evil-doers afoot who want the manuscript for the dark secrets of witchcraft it may contain. Minor characters in the story are soon dying mysterious deaths. Eventually, Lady Nairn's 15-year-old granddaughter, Lily, is kidnapped and threatened with death unless Kate finds the manuscript and hands it over within 48 hours.

The novel benefits mightily from Carrell's graceful prose. She's particularly good when writing about Shakespeare. One long, lovely digression begins: "I thought of Shakespeare, of the ease with which bright and dark worlds flew from his pen, bubbles blown carelessly on a breeze." Another strength is that Carrell shares with us a great deal of information about Shakespeare and his era. She digresses on Dr. John Dee, the great scholar and mathematician, whose views on magic may have influenced the playwright; on the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 ; and on the riot in New York in 1849 , when thousands of angry fans of an American Shakespearean actor protested outside the theater where his British rival was performing. At times, however, Carrell tells us more than we need to know about such things as human sacrifices practiced by the Aztecs and the Iron-Age Celts.

The novel is, of course, a thriller, and its biggest problem is that the author works too hard to give us thrill after thrill, like one of those Saturday-afternoon serials of my youth when every episode ended with a cliffhanger. A body is found, then disappears. A mysterious dark-haired man keeps turning up and performing nasty deeds. A tarot card featuring the Hanged Man is introduced, and a murder victim resembling the Hanged Man soon follows. Kate finds herself in darkness. Kate is racing across a roof. Kate is drowning. Kate is suspected of murder. Kate might be starring in an updated version of "The Perils of Pauline."

In too many scenes, Kate finds herself threatened by a man with a knife or a gun. Sometimes, she has a woman companion who's taken hostage. But intrepid Kate always triumphs. "The instant he pulled the gun from Joanna's head, I dove, pulling Jamie with me, hurtling as hard as I could into Lucas." "I slammed his arm against the wall, and he dropped his knife, but before I could reach it, Carrie tossed him hers, which he brought up against my throat." "In one last burst of strength, I hurled him off, rolling away, scrabbling for the blade that I knew had to be on the floor somewhere."

Carrell's sophistication as a Shakespearean scholar is not, to put it mildly, equaled by her sophistication as a writer of thrillers. Still, if you have a serious interest in Shakespeare and his plays, there's much to enjoy here. Personally, I'd rather see a good production of "Macbeth," but this lively and fact-filled novel would do nicely for a rainy day at the beach.

Anderson reviews mysteries and thrillers for The Post.