Books: Through the Centuries

In the heady pages of historical novels, readers can be led on the straightest of fictional lines, past drawn sword and torn corsage, to the very bosom of the past. This fall’s crop of historicals, ranging from Periclean Greece to 19th century North Africa, has everything the customers like, including a little history, but not too much.

THE ESCAPE OF SOCRATES, by Robert Pick (326 pp.; Knopf; $3.95). An arresting fictionalization, lightly laced with sex, of one of history’s most famous trials. Unjustly condemned to drink the hemlock on the charge that he was impious and had corrupted the young, Socrates refuses to escape and save his skin, preferring to save his soul. Not nearly as perceptive an account as Plato’s, of course, but full of lively local color (garlic-eating jurymen, the seductive street wiles of Athenian slave girls) and a sympathetic look at Socrates’ much maligned wife, Xanthippe.

LAUNCELOT, MY BROTHER, by Dorothy James Roberts (373 pp.; Appleton-Century-Crofts; $3.95). The inside story, told by Sir Launcelot’s brother Bors de Garis of the triangle formed by King Arthur, Queen Guenivere and the famed Knight of the Round Table. Author Roberts has the good taste to follow Sir Thomas Malory and Alfred Lord Tennyson in keeping the characters perfectly unreal and tucking the dalliance between the lines rather than between the sheets.

THE LONG SHIPS, by Frans G. Bengtsson (503 pp.; Knopf; $4.50) offers lusty Vikings lusting and looting, bedding and battling across Europe from the Ebro to the Dneiper. The slaughter seems remote and good-humored as Christianity comes to the heathens of the north.

BRIDE OF THE CONQUEROR, by Hartzell Spence (336 pp.; Random House;$3.95). When rich, beautiful Doña Eloisa Marta Maria del Cristofora Leovigilda Canillejas arrives in the New World, every Conquistador bachelor in Peru is waiting and many a married gallant is ready to murder his wife to possess her. Pizarro, the villainous governor, gazes down her bodice as she curtsies to him and his kisses are “like hot irons.” But Dona Eloisa side steps. In the end, Pizarro mounts the scaffold and Dona Eloisa gets the man she really loves.

BUCCANEER SURGEON, by C. V. Jerry (309 pp.; Hanover House; $3.50). Sir Francis Drake’s surgeon, who is as expert with a cutlass as with a scalpel, tangles with the enemy on the Spanish Main, escapes the Inquisition, falls into the arms of a sweet, cream-colored little savage and has a hell of a time getting away when she curdles. He has vowed never to stab a man in the back or rape a virgin, and despite almost irresistible temptation on both counts, he keeps his promise.

THE DARK LADY, by Cothburn O’Neal (313 pp.; Crown; $3.50). A quaint “theory” about who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays: it was a woman, Rosaline de Vere, illegitimate daughter of the Earl of Oxford. What with the prejudice of the day and Rose’s being a poor defenseless bit of a thing, Actor Will obligingly markets the plays with the Globe Theatre and signs his name to them. Rose meanwhile dashes off a great many billets-doux in the form of very quotable sonnets to her true love, the Earl of Southampton. The book is clearly marked as fiction, and not even the most credulous reader will take it as anything else.

THE SILVER OAR, by Howard Breslin (310 pp.; Crowell; $3.95). For quite a while it looks as if Cormac O’Shaugnessy Doyle, Papist and imprisoned 17th-century pirate, is going to march up the gallows, but not even the rock-ribbed Puritans have the heart to hang him after saucy Jill Murdoch takes up his defense. Told in the first person by Hero Doyle with a nice mixture of racy yarn-spinning and blarney.

THE AFFAIRS OF CAROLINE CHERIE, by Cecil Saint-Laurent (218 pp.; Crown; $3). One in a series of bestsellers that took Caroline through all phases of the French Revolution. Now her soldier-husband heads the Napoleonic occupation in Como in northern Italy, where he finds ample cause for jealousy. One wild night of Italian revolt. Caroline is tempted hourly by a series of suitors, ranging from a fisherman to the revolutionary leader, but every time the hot-blooded French lass is ready to succumb, the boudoir door crashes open or the long hand of coincidence plucks her up on her feet. Frustrating but fun.

AMERICAN CAPTAIN, by Edison Marshall (407 pp.; Farrar, Straus & Young; $3.95). How a Massachusetts seaman is double-crossed by the aristocratic father of the English girl he loves, falls into the clutches of Barbary pirates, is released and not only slips his arms around a dusky native princess but also gets his hands on so much gold it takes 25 baggage camels to transport it. After taking a 16-year beating in Africa, the seaman gets a ship to skipper plus an English girl to love, and the villain of the piece gets his comeuppance.