James Patterson's 'Jester' takes readers back 1,000 years

Hooded men of the Black Cross, searching for a relic so holy, so close to Jesus, it will draw pilgrims from all over the world.

Exciting hand-to-hand combat on castle ramparts.

Molten pitch flung over the side, battering rams and catapults flinging boulders and rocks. Lethal, flame-tipped arrows piercing the air.

It's warfare, circa 1096.

In the lusty days of yore, the sex is sudden, the gore is ample and people eat lots of root vegetables and garlic.

That's the world of "The Jester" (Little, Brown and Co.; $27.95), James Patterson's newest novel, and a departure for the best-selling author. After a prologue set in contemporary times, when the director of the Vatican Museum comes to inspect a find excavated in a French village, the novel plunges you back to 1096 and the hunt for the sacred artifact. You're on the trail of the Jester, a former innkeeper named Hugh who, after a bruising campaign in the Crusades (there's even a medieval army recruiting scene), has infiltrated a corrupt court where he believes his abducted wife, Sophie, is being held.

To find a legitimate foothold at court, he apprentices to an old jester named Norbert, who brooks no clichés or old chestnuts in knocking 'em dead, medieval-style.

This is a nimble new breed of jester, as agile in wordplay as he is in juggling and sleight-of-hand. Hugh is uniquely positioned for his role. He's the son of a cleric's mistress, and he's educated. He's learned Latin, storytelling, logic, grammar and most of all, to perform. His wild red hair and ability to do back flips doesn't hurt, either.

Hugh turns out to be a worthy hero, liberating the vassals from crippling taxes and menacing, plunderous raids by the thugs of the Black Cross, a rogue detachment of their liege lord prone to leveling whole towns. And though in the crushing atmosphere of sacking and pillaging, he loses many dear friends, he keeps his old sidekicks from the village and most importantly, meets Emilie, a beautiful blond noblewoman who proves instrumental in his survival.

Like Kenneth Roberts of another era, Patterson blends fiction and nonfiction in a historical tapestry that's fast and surprisingly page-turning. Jesters, with their access to power, have always fascinated us. During Shakespeare's time, the comic figures of his plays changed dramatically when actor Will Kemp retired from the company and a more lugubrious fool, Robert Armin, took his place.

"Somebody brought up the issue, how can you think like people thought in the year 1000?" Patterson said recently by phone from his home in Florida. "I'm struck by how similar we are. Even in 'The Canterbury Tales,' people had irony. The thing about the two wars, the lesson is, we haven't learned anything."

This past weekend, Patterson was in the Northwest for readings and book signings. He spends a lot of time on airplanes during book tours.

Patterson, 55, writes with the idea that business people will be reading his books on planes, and, he says, business folks already have too much homework to read.

"A lot of the world is not very concise. People get sick of reading."

To that end, "The Jester" has an airy typography, clear sentences and short chapters — a whopping 154 of them.

In a 464-page book, that's pretty cinematic. Michael Pietsch, the Little, Brown editor who has edited seven of his books, says that's deliberate. When he receives a new manuscript from Patterson, "The manuscripts are triple-spaced, and I get the same feeling the readers do."

"The pages turn really fast, and there's a velocity to the reading that's part of the pleasure. He wants to boil down the chapters so that, whether it's a point of drama, a point of character or a point of emotion, he hits that point clearly and hard, and moves on. Or it may be a suspense note that leaves you gasping. He boils down each scene to its essence."

Even now, as Patterson sits with the drafts of two new novels, he's bent on concision.

"It's eliminating information that isn't moving the thing forward, and adding information that either moves it forward or gets me to understand the scene better," he says. "At a certain point, I'd put on every chapter, 'be there.' "

Getting into the scene was particularly important in "The Jester," his first historical novel, which began 15 years ago with the idea that most recorded history was written from the point of view of nobles or people commissioned by nobles.

"I thought it would be fascinating to write from the point of view of a common person with a sense of humor. History does not recognize humor as valid in storytelling."

He's probably right. Think about Attilla the Hun, Ghengis Khan or just about any other dictator who marked an age, and you don't think humor.

Though this novel is medieval history lite, it was vetted by two historians from Yale, and a bibliography at the end lists such books as Karen Armstrong's "Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World" and Norman Cantor's "The Medieval Reader."

Much has been made of the marketing of today's best sellers, and this book features a contest at the front, a mail-in chance for a trip to France. In last week's TV Guide, Patterson had a "Murder Club" short story that you can complete for a prize. He loves the genial handshake of such interactions with readers, and of the winner, he says, "You know it's gonna be a 15-year-old, a brilliant kid who won't be a writer; who'll become a nuclear scientist. I love it. For me, the readers are in this with me. They know we're playing a game."

This book was written in collaboration with Andrew Gross, with whom he wrote "2nd Chance," and another (as yet unpublished) Murder Club novel. They have another book in the works set in Teddy Roosevelt's time. Earlier, he'd collaborated with Peter de Jonge in a novel about golf, "Miracle on the 17th Green," and more recently, "The Beach House." Of his 21 novels, these are his collaborations with other authors, and they hearken back to what he did for a long time: advertising.

"It was a collaborative process," he says. "Teamwork can work."

The man who has ranged over several genres is looking at tackling the horror genre someday. "If I have an emotional reaction to books in a certain genre, I feel I can write them," he says.

But in the meantime, he recommends newcomers to the Patterson oeuvre start with "Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas" for romance, "Along Came a Spider" for mystery and "When the Wind Blows" for fantasy. The latter is about a girl who could fly, and he's drawing inspiration for a children's book from his own 5-year-old son Jack.

He won an Edgar Award, mystery's highest honor, for his first novel, 1976's "The Thomas Berryman Number," and he's had quite a success in TV and film. "First to Die" was an NBC movie recently, and "Kiss the Girls" was greatly enhanced by Morgan Freeman as Alex Cross, the Washington, D.C., detective hero of several of his mysteries, reprised in "Along Came a Spider."

Meanwhile, the man who sends a lot of people to their bookshelves has been frenetically going through 80 books himself, looking for the book he'll offer up on "The Today Show" for April's book club pick.

He says he's looking for an author when, once finished, "you want to pick up another book immediately."

His fans might say that's not a bad description of James Patterson.

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com