The shining,

by Stephen Marlowe

A Novel about Alcibiades,whom men followed blindly, and his shattered dreams of empire.

Genres: Historical Fiction

384 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1965

About the author

Aka Milton S. Lesser, Adam Chase, Andrew Frazer, Jason Ridgway, C.H. Thames.

Stephen Marlowe (1928–2008) was the author of more than fifty novels, including nearly two dozen featuring globe-trotting private eye Chester Drum. Born Milton Lesser, Marlowe was raised in Brooklyn and attended the College of William and Mary. After several years writing science fiction under his given name, he legally adopted his pen name, and began focusing on Chester Drum, the Washington-based detective who first appeared in The Second Longest Night (1955).

Although a private detective akin to Raymond Chandler’s characters, Drum was distinguished by his jet-setting lifestyle, which carried him to various exotic locales from Mecca to South America. These espionage-tinged stories won Marlowe acclaim, and he produced more than one a year before ending the series in 1968. After spending the 1970s writing suspense novels like The Summit (1970) and The Cawthorn Journals (1975), Marlowe turned to scholarly historical fiction. He lived much of his life abroad, in Switzerland, Spain, and France, and died in Virginia in 2008.

Marlowe received the Shamus Award, "The Eye" (Lifetime achievment award) in 1997.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another satisfying find from my local library's used book room. One whole quarter purchased this wonderful historical novel. It is written from Hiero of Marathon's point of view. Hiero's tale is long and full of hardships and tragedy but not without great successes and friendships too. Hiero begins his tale as a supplicant seeking aid from a distant relative after his father's death. From supplicant to actor to herald to slave to soldier...the list goes on and on. Hiero befriends many important people and makes just as many important enemies. All the while he desires to know the truth about his paternity and when he finally does, it offers him no comfort or absolution. He finally learns that nothing endures and all things change. "To live and know yourself, to strive, aware that life is short and one must die, to do what you can, to do what you must, this is man's life and his fulfillment."

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was on a clearance cart in a book shop in DC. I was attracted by the cover and picked it up for a song. I read this book a year or two before reading Thucydides in a Greek history class. The instructor asked us what we thought was the central principle or force at work throughout the Peloponnesian War. My answer was "power politics", and it earned me a mark of respect from him. Nevermind that I had never used that term before and couldn't say how I was able to use it that time--and quite correctly too. The book is a clearly written and moving tale of one man's experience of many manifestations of that war as he is drawn over time to the sites of major events. His relationships with Alcibiades and other historical figures lead him into situations and positions that enable him to observe them and understand how their actions affect the lives of the lower classes. It's a book about how human conflicts can be started at local levels but then can spread in the original or modified form to larger and greater states and regions. This actually describes the arc of history during my lifetime, particularly the post-WWII evolution of spheres of influence in the East and West, and of the final retreat of European colonialism from the South to the North. Another key point for me is that wars and other conflicts always leave the erstwhile victors and losers vulnerable to resist the forces of new powers emerging from previously unknown places. And that's power politics, which we tend to succeed at because of our natural (that is, unearned) advantages, such as two huge oceans, several incredible river systems, and the space and resources to feed everybody should we choose to do that.