The Tournament

May 25, 2015
The 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth Tudor, the narrator of this delightful, well-crafted thriller set in 1546 from Reilly (The Great Zoo of China), accompanies her tutor, Roger Ascham, to Constantinople, where the sultan Suleiman is hosting a tournament to determine the world’s chess champion. As part of her political education, Elizabeth has a memorable encounter with arrogant young Ivan, “grand prince of the Duchy of Muscovy” and future Ivan the Terrible, but her life lessons turn to the deductive when Suleiman puts brilliant Ascham in charge of investigating the murder and mutilation of an anti-Islamic cardinal just before the tournament’s start. She also gains a better understanding of man’s carnal nature from hearing about the Ottoman crown prince’s after-hours parties and spying on drunken priests cavorting with teenage boys in the priests’ chambers. Reilly remains true to the realities of his historical characters and effectively communicates Elizabeth’s feeling of being an inquisitive stranger without falling into undue exoticism. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME.

May 15, 2015

Reilly is a master storyteller of modern adventure thrillers (Ice Station; Temple). In a departure from his usual motif, he sets this novel in Elizabethan England, featuring the Virgin Queen herself. On her deathbed, good Queen Bess recounts a tale of depravity and palace intrigue in which she was an unexpected witness. It is 1546, a plague is sweeping through England, and Elizabeth is 13 years old. When her father, King Henry VIII, receives an invitation from the sultan of the Ottoman empire to send his best chess player to an international tournament in Constantinople, Roger Ascham, the royal tutor, convinces the king to allow Princess Elizabeth to accompany the English delegation for safekeeping. Their visit to Constantinople is marred by sexual indiscretion, dishonesty, and murder. Owing to his reputation for logic, Ascham is asked by the sultan to solve the murders that have occurred during the tournament. With Elizabeth in tow, Ascham uncovers treachery and debauchery at the most exalted levels. VERDICT Fans may be disappointed in this slow-paced murder mystery with a chess theme that is far less captivating than Reilly's previous work. For a better example, see Katherine Neville's The Eight. Checkmate.--Laura Cifelli, Fort Myers-Lee Cty. P.L., FL

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 26, 2015
Reilly is a unique, vivacious guide in this entertaining trip to the world’s first international chess tournament in 16th-century Constantinople, complete with murders, political and religious intrigues, and the assorted opulence and decadence of Sultan Suleiman’s Ottoman Empire. Reader Firth gives quite a performance as the curious, naive, strong-willed, and utterly charming protagonist Princess Bess, the 13-year-old daughter of Henry VIII and the late Anne Boleyn, who is on a journey with her brilliant tutor, Roger Ascham. Her vocal expertise is displayed as the future queen meets and matches wits with the sultan’s officious, misogynistic grand vizier, flirts with an arrogant, heavily accented teenage Prince Ivan of Muscovy (Bess claims to be the one to label him Ivan the Terrible), peeks breathlessly into the sultan’s son’s ultrahedonistic group-sex soirees, and assists Ascham as he searches for the murderer of six boys. Firth’s winning presentation of Reilly’s imaginative faux-historical yarn would be sinful to miss. A S&S/Gallery hardcover.

Starred review from May 1, 2015
Reilly's previous novel, The Great Zoo of China (2015), was a contemporary thriller set in a high-tech theme park; this one is a historical adventure that takes place nearly half a millennium ago. Set in 1546, the book tells the story of an English scholar, Roger Ascham, who travels to Constantinople, where the sultan of the Ottoman Empire is hosting a chess tournament in which the best players in the world are competing. Accompanying Ascham is his young student, Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII who would later become queen of England. Soon after their arrival in Constantinople, Ascham and Elizabeth encounter murder, political intrigue, and decadence on a scale unknown to them. While the story is fictional, the novel's main characters are so vividly rendered and the world in which the story takes place is made so palpably real, it's easy to forget that a talented writer is mixing fact and fiction. This is a definite change of pace for Reilly, who's known primarily for fast-paced, high-concept action thrillers, but it's a complete successa vibrantly detailed environment, richly drawn characters, and a great story. Action fans and PBS types can share their enthusiasm this time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

May 15, 2015
Oh, to dine with Ignatius de Loyola, Michelangelo, and Roger Ascham, genius Cambridge scholar and royal tutor: the soon-to-be-queen Elizabeth did just that one fine Constantinople afternoon. The occasion? Suleiman the Magnificent's legendary 1546 chess tournament, the setting of Reilly's (Scarecrow Returns, 2012, etc.) intriguing novel, a murder mystery laced with social commentary and spiced by Machiavellian ideas about the art of leadership. Nuggets of history? Reilly delves into the Muslim veil, the Sunni-Shia conflict, and Muslim preservation of classical knowledge during Europe's Dark Ages. The clever premise takes the form of Elizabeth's deathbed confession to Gwinny, her lifelong friend and "chief attendant of her bedchamber." The most interesting characters are the princess, "the brightest 13-year-old...and mature beyond her years," and Ascham, "big round nose, hangdog brown eyes," treasuring learning as the "noblest of all endeavors." Suleiman summons the world to the tournament, held in Constantinople's Hagia Sophia. Henry VIII dispatches Ascham and his chess-master friend, Gilbert Giles. Since plague's afoot, Ascham persuades Henry to permit Elizabeth, a perilous third in line to the throne, to accompany him, along with Elsie, an older but flighty girl. It's Elsie who exposes Elizabeth to debauchery's infection within Topkapi Palace: she related "frolicking with the prince-Selim said to me, 'English rose, you are a lover fit for a king.' " But it's Ascham who draws Elizabeth into a mystery he's charged by Suleiman to solve-the murder of Cardinal Farnese, an anti-Muslim representative of Rome. Approach with an optimistic suspension of disbelief-Elizabeth I in Constantinople investigating murders, really?-and enjoy a rollicking good yarn.

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