This book by Charlie Lovett has a little bit of everything – art history, romance, mystery, time change. It’s a simple, fast read and begins with a book dealer traveling to England to recover from the death of his wife. Tucked into a book he pulls from a shop’s shelf is a Victorian portrait of a woman who uncannily resembles his wife, with the initials B.B. Who is B.B.? He needs to know. So we are led into the age of Shakespeare, how rare books were jealously guarded or passed on, perhaps thought not valuable, perhaps forged. In the mix are the believers that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare and the believers that Christopher Marlowe or Francis Bacon were responsible. And we are teased with how forgeries sometimes fool the professionals.
