Gooden, Philip (Philippa Morgan)

views updated

Gooden, Philip (Philippa Morgan)

PERSONAL:

Male.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Bath, England. E-mail—p.morgan@hud.ac.uk.

CAREER:

Taught university-level English; writer, 2001—.

MEMBER:

Crime Writers' Association (chair).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Top-Ten Historical Novel designation, Booklist, 2004, for Mask of Night; HRH The Duke of Edinburgh ESU English Language Book Award, joint winner, 2006, winner 2007.

WRITINGS:

"NICK REVILL" MYSTERY NOVELS

Sleep of Death, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2000.

Death of Kings, Constable and Robinson (London, England), 2001.

The Pale Companion, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2002.

Alms for Oblivion, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2003.

Mask of Night, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2004.

An Honorable Murderer, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2005.

OTHER

(Editor) The Open Door, and Other Ghost Stories, 1990.

(Editor and author of introduction and notes) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World and Other Thrilling Tales, Penguin (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor) The Mammoth Book of Literary Anecdotes, Robinson (London, England), 2002.

(As Philippa Morgan) Chaucer and the House of Fame (novel), Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2004.

Who's Whose: A No-nonsense Guide to Easily Confused Words, Bloomsbury (London, England), 2004, Walker (New York, NY), 2006.

Faux Pas? A No-nonsense Guide to Words and Phrases from Other Languages, Walker (New York, NY), 2006.

The Salisbury Manuscript, Soho Press (New York, NY), 2008.

Name Dropping: Darwinian Struggles, Oedipal Feelings, and Kafkaesque Ordeals: An A to Z Guide to the Use of Names in Everyday Language, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2008.

Also author of The Guinness Guide to Better English.

"CHAUCER" SERIES; WRITING AS PHILIPPA MORGAN

Chaucer and the House of Fame, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2004.

Chaucer and the Legend of Good Women, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2005.

Chaucer and the Doctor of Physic, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Philip Gooden is the author of several mysteries in a series featuring Nick Revill, an actor who also happens to be a sleuth. The plots of these books parallel plays by William Shakespeare. In the first book in the series, Sleep of Death, Revill gets a job with the acting troupe Chamberlain's Men and is offered temporary housing by a fellow actor who lives in the Eliot household. Revill soon discovers that his new roommate's father has died and the man's mother almost immediately remarried her deceased husband's uncle, reflecting the story line in Shakespeare's Hamlet. It does not take long for Revill, who narrates the story, to become suspicious and start to investigate the father's death, which surprisingly leads him to suspect a noted playwright. Writing for the Crime Time Web site, Anne Curry called Sleep of Death a "promising start" to a series and noted: "Despite … dramatic stereotypes, the book has an underlying darkness which is emphasized by the narrative device of the murderer interjecting his thoughts into the main story."

In The Pale Companion, readers find Revill and his acting company performing Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Like the play itself, the acting troupe is to perform the play for the marriage celebration of Lord Elcombe's son, but Revill soon discovers that the groom is not interested in marriage. When an eccentric woodsman hangs himself and Lord Elcombe is found murdered, Revill joins local magistrate Adam Fielding in tracking down the killer or killers. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the book "a pretentious stream of allusions, puns, and literary sallies" that "provides endless in-jokes for the enlightened while muffling Nick's otherwise pleasant chatter for everybody else." Rex E. Klett, writing in Library Journal, noted that Gooden's "solid and intriguing plot" results "in a fine historical mystery."

The plot of Alms for Oblivion coincides with Shakespeare's play Troilus and Cressida. Revill is the primary suspect in the murder of an old friend who was competing with Revill for a part in the play. Soon another fellow actor is killed, as well as Nick's girlfriend Nell, who was also a prostitute. Now on the run, Revill sets out to find the real killer. A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote: "Those familiar with the more vicious dramas of the Elizabethan period will particularly appreciate this tale … written in readable modern English." Klett called Alms for Oblivion "an excellent Elizabethan historical," while Booklist reviewer Connie Fletcher noted that, "as usual, Gooden devises a fiendishly intricate mystery in a well-realized historical and literary setting."

The players are planning a private performance of Romeo and Juliet in Mask of Night. The play is staged as part of an effort to halt the feuding between two families. When Shakespeare's friend, Dr. Fern, is stabbed to death backstage, Revill seeks out the killer while the violence continues. A Kirkus Reviews contributor felt "the lunatic serial killer subplot doesn't quite mesh with the more rational history." Fletcher praised the effort, noting that "Gooden may be the best history-mystery writer going" and that "Revill is a steadily developing, complex character."

An Honorable Murderer finds Revill acting in Ben Jonson's play Masque of Peace, which is being staged in London. He soon becomes entangled in political intrigues involving the negotiations of a peace treaty between Spain and England—including a conspiracy to derail these negotiations. A series of suspicious deaths leads Revill to begin considering those around him as possible suspects, including Jonson himself. Although a Publishers Weekly contributor found the mystery's resolution "less than satisfying," the reviewer went on to note that "Shakespeare fans will be intrigued by Gooden's intriguing use of themes from both Othello and Hamlet." A Kirkus Reviews contributor liked the "enjoyably twisty ending."

Under the pseudonym of Philippa Morgan, Gooden wrote Chaucer and the House of Fame. This time, fourteenth-century writer Geoffrey Chaucer, before his days as author of the Canterbury Tales, is on a case that involves him helping the English monarch King Edward III secure political relations with a French nobleman. When an assassin of unknown loyalties commits a series of murders, Chaucer and his companions set out to solve the crimes. A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted the author "wraps a muted mystery in a crackling adventure and some top-notch history." David Pitt, writing in Booklist, noted that Gooden "has created a central character and a story that will leave readers clamoring for more."

Among Gooden's nonfiction works are reference books that both guide and entertain. These include his award-winning Faux Pas? A No-nonsense Guide to Words and Phrases from Other Languages. In this volume, Gooden rates some 700 words and phrases from the French, Latin, German, and eighteen other languages with a "pretentiousness index," and includes sources in which the words are used, most from various British newspapers. Marianne Orme wrote in Library Journal: "Gooden's opinions about word usage are at once serious and amusing."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 2003, Connie Fletcher, review of Alms for Oblivion, p. 1544; February 15, 2004, Connie Fletcher, review of Mask of Night, p. 1042; September 1, 2004, David Pitt, review of Chaucer and the House of Fame, p. 70.

Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2002, review of The Pale Companion, p. 456; March 15, 2003, review of Alms for Oblivion, p. 430; February 1, 2004, review of Mask of Night, p. 110; August 1, 2004, review of Chaucer and the House of Fame, p. 717; February 15, 2005, review of An Honorable Murderer, p. 201.

Library Journal, June 1, 2002, Rex E. Klett, review of The Pale Companion, p. 200; July, 2002, Denise J. Stankovics, review of The Mammoth Book of Literary Anecdotes, p. 80; May 1, 2003, Rex Klett, review of Alms for Oblivion, p. 159; February 15, 2006, Marianne Orme, review of Faux Pas? A No-nonsense guide to Words and Phrases from Other Languages, p. 144.

Publishers Weekly, June 10, 2002, review of The Pale Companion, p. 44; March 10, 2003, review of Alms for Oblivion, p. 56; August 2, 2004, review of Chaucer and the House of Fame, p. 55; March 14, 2005, review of An Honorable Murderer, p. 48.

Reference & Research Book News, August, 2006, review of Faux Pas?

School Library Journal, October, 2003, Jane Halsall, review of Alms for Oblivion, p. 207.

Weekly Standard, January 3, 2005, Jon L. Breen, review of Chaucer and the House of Fame, p. 31.