REVIEWS OF ROYAL BLOOD

Royal Blood has met with good reviews in the popular press and the book is selling well. But how will Ricardians react? We're accustomed, after all, to going over books about Richard III with a fine-toothed comb. What will we have to say about it?

The members of the Society's e-mail discussion list had a list of specific questions--and several people have sent away for the footnotes to see where Fields has gotten some of his information. Most of the online members who read it so far have quarreled with one point or another -- few of us really thought the final what-if chapter was necessary. But, we largely enjoyed it for its unique perspective -- that of a man, accustomed to taking any side in a dispute and arguing it successfully, stepping back and analyzing the evidence as dispassionately as he is able. (And, for some of us, it's delicious to see him reduce Alison Weir to a heap of dusty rubble.)

Ricardians who prefer the more nuanced readings of professional historians will find that Fields has occasionally reduced a complex issue to a potentially misleading simplicity. That's a lawyer's job, after all. But, despite its occasional flaw, Royal Blood stands as a refreshing antidote to Desmond Seward (Richard III: England's Black Legend) and Alison Weir (The Princes in the Tower) -- every bit as likely to engage the attention of the general reader, and a lot closer to the facts.

Certainly, Fields has entranced the reviewers. Here are some samples:

"ARE YOU WEARY of our modern political swamp, and the spectacle of Washington lawyers dancing on the head of an equivocation? I have a superb antidote. Return with me to the days when defending your political position meant strapping on a suit of steel, and, wielding a sword that could bisect a horse, slashing your way past a throng of chaps similarly tailored in steel and armed with hideous, eviscerating weapons. (And not a lawyer in sight....Return to the Yorkist Age, via "Royal Blood: Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes," by Bertram Fields (a lawyer, oddly enough). Mr. Fields has written a most fascinating book -- a step by step lawyer's brief using 500-year-old evidence in an attempt to solve one of the great mysteries of Western history."--The Wall Street Journal

"Shakespeare (a Tudor playwright, after all) said Richard III did it. Contemporary mystery writers such as Josephine Tey and Elizabeth Peters would argue the reverse. And historians have weighed in on both sides. In another salvo in the bookish battle over whether or not Richard III killed his royal nephews in order to consolidate his power, Los Angeles entertainment attorney Fields offers a remarkably thorough and intricate history. After reading Fields' examination, readers will find themselves regarding British icons--Hastings, the Tudors, Dorset, etc.--with new appreciation. Fields sprinkles this erudite look at 15th-century England with enough informative asides to make the complexities of the Wars of the Roses a little less overwhelming...It's easy to see why Fields is such a successful lawyer--his account is masterfully argued and expertly researched. It may be a little much for the casual reader, but then Ricardian revisionists rarely are casual readers.--Publishers Weekly

"Fields argues his case with the skill of a top litigator....As we're drawn into the Case of the Two Princes, we embark on a medieval mystery with some of the allure of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and dive also into the murky depths of conspiracy theory and political intrigue. Switch the time and setting, and Royal Blood reads like one of those labyrinthine, and endlessly gripping, 'Who-shot-JFK' chronicles....By molding his tale into a bated-breath whodunit, he serves up history the best way possible. Suspense, mood, anecdote--Fields employs a novelist's tools, as Norman Mailer did in examining the Gary Gilmore case, to give us the blood and spirit as well as the facts of the time."--Book