HarperNorth first paperback edition - 2023
Well, Scott Mariani has certainly sprung a couple of surprises. First, he has taken Ben Hope back to 2005, before all the other stories in the series. The first, The Alchemist's Secret, started in September 2007 and had his housekeeper Winnie looking after his isolated cottage on the Galway shore. The second, The Domesday Prophesy, commenced in June 2008, still with an Irish homestead. It is only later that year, in The Heretics Treasure - that Hope has set up his training base at Le Val near Valognes, Normandy.
Secondly, although the storyline is set in his usually fast paced modern times - 2005 - it concerns a mystery that goes right back to 1483! Yes, it involves Richard III and the Missing Princes. I finished the novel yesterday morning and that same evening sat down to watch the Channel 4 documentary, The Princes in the Tower: The New Evidence. Philippa Langley and Judge Robert Rinder, travel to Ireland, France, the Netherlands as well as London and, thanks to the help of other historical sleuths, unearth at least three documents which certainly casts doubt on the official story of a wicked avuncular murder. Well, I have ordered her book, which thanks to Amazon Prime, should arrive today, so I can read in greater and more measured detail their arguments. The three documents uncovered abroad, involving 'Richard, duke of York', the Emperor Maximilian I and the Duchess Margaret of Burgundy, certainly look 'kosher' as Rinder opines, but they merely seems authentic for the period. To prove it was Edward's second son who was really involved is another matter. Were Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck actually Edward V and his younger brother, rather than two Pretenders? I am sure the debate has not ended.
As for Mariani's novel? In his Author's Note at the end, he makes it clear which side of the fence he is on, citing for further reading Matthew Lewis' The Survival of the Princes in the Tower, Annette Carson's The Maligned King, and John Ashdown-Hill's The Mythology of the Princes in the Tower - hardly unbiased source material. Moreover, he gives the Internet links to the Richard III Society and The Missing Princes Project. I should be pleased, being a long-standing member of the Society (in fact I have just notched up half a century), but as an historian in search of the truth, I would wish for some counter arguments to be available.
The novel starts with its usual Hope gusto - a young lady, niece to his housekeeper Winnie, is blown up in his car. She had hopes of being a professional ballet dancer. Unlikely now, as the right leg below the knee had to be amputated. Ben was not going to lie down: a resolve that had hardened like forged steel inside his heart. That he was going to devote himself, from this moment onwards, to figuring out who had hurt Aurora. That he was going to track them down. He was going to find them. He was going to punish them. And then he was going to send them all to hell. Of course, it should have been him in the car. One week earlier, Hope had met Professor Hugh Mortimer in a Dublin hotel, listened to a seemingly cock-and-bull story about a mystery stretching back to 1483 and walked out on him. Now, he wished he hadn't, as Mortimer had subsequently drowned in his private lake the following day. It is quickly apparent his death was not suicide but 'suspicious'.
This means travelling to Professor Mortimer's home outside York; meeting the latter's wimpy younger brother Lance; hearing an unlikely tale that the Professor thought he was a direct descendant of Perkin Warbeck, one of the two 'Pretenders' to the throne after Richard III's death at Bosworth. He meets up with Tony Kitson, Chairman of the Yorkshire Branch of the Richard III Society, who fills him in on the background to the 1483-1499 saga, which includes the 'fact' that Perkin and Lady Catherine Huntly - married under the auspices of King James of Scotland - had a son, one Richard Perkins. From thence came, eventually, the late Professor Mortimer. Kitson is murdered by the same dark-haired, bespectacled man plus other thugs, as he tries to flee his burning cottage with Hope. The quest then leads Hope to Liechtenstein and the island of Sark and, finally, the Borders near Berwick.
The denouement is complicated not only by having to deal with the man who caused Aurora to lose a leg, the Prof to be drowned and Kitson to be killed - Lord Jasper Lockwood, but also a Saudi Prince Hassan Bin Ibrahim Al Sharif and his thuggish entourage. Being Hope, he escapes from an underground chamber, puts over a dozen baddies out of their misery, and rides off with £4 million to hand over to Aurora for her projected Ballet School. The story is not one of Mariani's best, but it's another interesting 'take' on the mystery of the Ricardian princes and there is enough blood and guts to keep the thriller readers happy.
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