2008-11-18 Name of the Rose it ain't

Sorry, it's a murder mystery set in a monastery of grotesque monks with an ever increasing body count, a historical setting and a standard flawed detective and his questioning young side kick. But it isn't the Name of the Rose. The anachronism of the genre to the period which Eco explores so well is not appreciated here. The author has no real understanding of the Tudor period, as opposed to knowledge of the facts. Servants are not just incumberances to be shooed away when the principal characters need privacy. No Abbot or Justice would pour out drinks for their own guests, no Commissioner would pull a door bell himself. But of course ubiqitous servants don't allow a 20th Century-style detective to solve a sealed room mystery. The author does not know what he needs to look up. The Penitent Thief is not Barabbas, Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologia would not fit into a desk drawer, if indeed desks with locked drawers were a common feature of Tudor studies. And an 'amusing' reference to the Name of the Rose only serves to emphasise how inferior this. Sorry, just another Inspector Morse in tights,