ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602090108
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
MORALITY PLAY.
By Barry Unsworth. Doubleday. $22.50.
A young priest escapes the drudgery of his calling and joins a band of actors who travel from village to village performing morality plays.
"I was in trouble enough already to any outward view, and my sins crowded upon me. ... and yet this was a time free of trouble compared with what was to follow upon our acting the Play of Thomas Wells."
The aforementioned play is based on the murder of a young boy in the fiefdom of the powerful Baron Richard de Guise. The boy's death and the young mute woman who will hang for it ignite the fervor of Martin, their leader, who writes a play for the company to perform that comes a little too close to the truth.
Unsworth paints a striking picture - a world in which the rich and powerful control everything and the poor have no recourse in law or religion. An atmosphere of fear and the constant presence of death permeates every aspect of life. The scraps and rags his players employ create more truth than any of the local institutions.
"Morality Play" is a fascinating glimpse of a past that is in some ways not so very different from our present.
- ANNA WENTWORTH
SHOCK WAVE.
By Clive Cussler. Simon & Schuster. $25.
Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt are at it again! If you're a fan, you've either bought "Shock Wave" or are about to. The novice, however, should know that Pitt, Cussler's fictional hero, is about to save the world again.
"Shock Wave's" arch villain is Andrew Dorsett, a sadistic megalomaniac who runs a diamond cartel and owns 80 percent of the world's colored gemstones. Dorsett has developed a sonar-based mining device that will help him plunder the world's diamonds in order to control the gemstone market. Incidentally, the device will also destroy mankind as we know it. For this villain who boasts about all the deadly sins from murder to mayhem, it's just another day at work.
Pitt is drawn into the drama when he rescues Dorsett's daughter, Maeve - the one who didn't have a sex change - from a shipwreck her father created. Obviously, we can all feel fairly sure that Pitt will prevail, but that's all I'll tell, except to repeat that Cussler has done it again in "Shock Wave." It's pure Cussler, and like James Bond, "Nobody does it better!"
- JUDY KWELLER
LENGTH: Medium: 52 linesby CNB