The Semper Sonnet

Imaginative plotting and depth of character distinguish this centuries-spanning thriller from Margolis (Disillusions), despite its broad similarities to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. During a weekend in Grantham, Mass., Lee Nicholson, a graduate student in English literature at Columbia, buys an old book of Elizabethan love poems. Inside the volume is a slip of paper on which is written what appears to be an unknown Shakespeare sonnet. The morning after she's interviewed on TV in Manhattan about this exciting discovery, she goes out for coffee. When she returns to her Upper West Side apartment, she finds the cameraman from the TV show, with whom she spent the night, shot to death in her bed. In addition, her things are disturbed, possibly by someone looking for a copy of the poem. After Lee becomes the cops' prime suspect in the cameraman's murder, she flees to England on the track of a clue hidden in one of the stanzas%E2%80%94in particular, to Henford Manor, which was visited by Elizabeth I in the 16th century. The story line takes some highly unexpected turns, and Margolis pulls off twists that could have been risible in the hands of a lesser writer. Agent: Jean V. Naggar, Jean V. Naggar Literary. (Apr.)