Twelfth Night is for revelry, Thirteenth Night is for revelations... "Orsino is dead." The message sends the jester Feste, disguised as a German merchant, back to the duchy where, years earlier, he had foiled the plans of Saladin's agent, Malvolio, and secured the duchy for Orsino and his bride, Viola. As agent of the Fool's Guild, Feste must uncover the cause of Orsino's death, be it accidental, suicide, or murder. Has Malvolio returned to win the revenge he swore? Or has another, more sinister cabal plunged the duchy into political upheaval? Set in a brilliantly recreated time of pageantry and squalor, THIRTEENTH NIGHT brings alive a world long vanished. From the fetid canals of Venice to the high seas to the castles and hidden Roman tunnels of Orsino, here is a tale that will keep readers in its thrall until its dramatic and unexpected final scene...

Alan Gordon is a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society and lives with his family in Queens, New York. He is the author of several short stories, which have appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and in the anthology Once Upon a Crime II, among other places. THIRTEENTH NIGHT is his first novel.