Books in Brief
Vivid details of imagined and real lives in the 1600s

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"The Shadow King," set in the 17th century, feels more like a link in the trilogy than its own novel. Balthasar, the only child of Elizabeth and Pelagius' secret marriage, knows his odd ancestry, but he's determined to make a nice, quiet life for himself as a doctor. Living as a simple bourgeois is no easy business for a black man — and a secret king to boot.

The book is peppered with real-life characters, and early on, Balthasar has a disastrous encounter with the English writer (and sometime spy) Aphra Behn. Thanks to her meddling, he loses all written evidence of his royal heritage. In ignominy, he studies medicine in his native Holland, moves to London to practice surgery, marries a nice English girl, moves to Barbados, and returns finally to London for one last meeting with Behn.

"The Shadow King" by Jane Stevenson Houghton Mifflin, $24

Stevenson was an academic before she became a fiction writer, and "The Shadow King" provides ample opportunity for her to show off her exhaustive research into the era.

She glories in detail right from the opening scene, where Balthasar watches as his anatomy instructor carves up a dead pregnant woman's uterus. We also visit a London theater, get a primer on Barbadian economics and learn all about "molly-houses," private clubs in London "where men with an interest in their own sex discreetly foregathered." Stevenson wisely trusts in the pleasures of historical minutiae, and we make our way smoothly, if a little slowly, over the narrative bridge to the next and final novel.

— Claire Dederer

Because he strives for accuracy, Simpson struggles sometimes with his subject's tendency to exaggerate and invent. He tells the story of Adams' first book signing as it's usually told — the author abandoning his taxi because of the huge crowds blocks from the store where it was to take place, the book's appearance the next day at No. 1 on the London "Sunday Times" best-sellers list, and the author's comparison of the event to "having an orgasm with no foreplay." "It's a wonderful story ... " notes Simpson ruefully: "It would be even better if it was true."

When dealing with a couple of incidents which led to lawsuits, Simpson gamely defends Adams, insisting his inaccuracies were unintentional, his insensitivity to colleagues' egos balanced by lifelong loyalty.

"Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams" by M.J. Simpson Justin Charles & Co., $27.95

Creator of the wildly successful "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and the other four books in that "trilogy," Douglas Adams loomed large on the landscape of 20th-century popular fiction. He was also a physically large man, an atheist and a lifelong Beatles fan. M.J. Simpson's "Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams" covers these and other personal matters, while also giving a step-by-ambitious-step account of Adams' professional career.

Interspersed with topical "interludes," the book's 42 chronological chapters are mainly composed of (footnoted) excerpts from hundreds of interviews. For readers unfamiliar with Britishisms, there will be a few opaque references. But Simpson provides helpful guides to public figures less well-known to us colonials, and to the conventions of Britain's educational system and its radio and television programs. There's also a foreword by Neil Gaiman, author of "Don't Panic," an earlier Adams biography that comes nowhere near the standard of painstakingly factual detail Simpson upholds in "Hitchhiker."

— Nisi Shawl

Anne Roiphe has mined the terrain of conflicted motherhood in "Up the Sandbox!" and "Fruitful: A Real Mother in the Modern World"; dealt with growing up Jewish and alienated from her parents in "1185 Park Avenue: A Memoir"; and examined the institution of marriage in "Married: A Fine Predicament." She now departs for other pastures, which, unfortunately, turn out to be decidedly less green.

Roiphe is a member in good standing of The Church of What's Happening Now, whether it is feminism, the defense of neglected, overworked, under-appreciated mothers or a thoughtful examination of the question: "Why marriage?"

In her latest novel, "Secrets of the City," she has tried, as have so many artists, playwrights and authors of late, to come to terms with the aftermath of 9-11, to forge a response to terrorism, to a realization of our collective vulnerability and to the general unmanageability of urban life. The book is not really a novel: It is a pastiche of episodic reports on all manner of goings-on in an unnamed city that is New York.

"Secrets of the City" by Anne Roiphe Shaye Areheart, $24

Some of the litany of secrets unearthed are: The mayor is Jewish and there are anti-Semites around; some city employees are unfaithful to their wives and steal from the citizens by being on the take big-time; some mistresses seize the main chance and rat out their married lovers; there is ethnic hatred of every stripe between and among ghettoized immigrants; favors are called in to get your kid in a good private school; there are good and compassionate leaders who simply can't find the money to keep the branch libraries open; murders that incite riots might not be what they seem; ducks dying in the park have been systematically poisoned by terrorists, and it worked so well that they moved on to people.

Is this a treatment for an episode of "Law & Order?" Ripped from the headlines! Where is Jerry Orbach when you need him?

— Valerie Ryan

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