JOHN M. FORD – The Scholars of Night. Tor, hardcover, 1988; paperback, 1989.

   John M. Ford, author of an award-winning fantasy novel, enters the espionage lists with The Scholars of Night. Nicholas Hansard is hardly anything like a spy. He’s an academic, a historian, a man of no violent urges and no particular physical prowess.

    He’s also a member of Raphael’s Washington think tank, and his best friend is Allan Berenson, master of board games of politics and war. And dead. And, apparently, a traitor.

   A recently uncovered four-hundred-year-old play, possibly by Christopher Marlowe, has something to do with all this. Hansard, in sorrow and rage, resigns from the tank. But Raphael asks him first to go to England, have a look at the play, give his opinion on historicity.

   He agrees. So easy to get lured into the world of death and double-dealing. Quite an artistic job we have here by Ford, crafty and complex … and perhaps a bit too fuzzy around the edges.

Bio-Bibliographic Notes:   This is the only work of crime or espionage fiction by the witty and multi-talented John M. Ford included in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, but he had a long list of science fiction and fantasy novels to his credit when he died in 2006. He left us far too early; he was only 49 at the time of his passing. For more information, check out his Wikipedia page here.