The Tournament

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. [em]Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME. (July) [/em]