The Garrett work most clearly related to Death of the Fox is, as its full title indicates, The Succession:A Novel of Elizabeth and James. Its similarities to Death of the Fox are many. It, too, is a historical novel set in Britain during the time of Queen Elizabeth and King James. And it, too, is less a driving narrative than a meditation on time and history and a lyrical evocation of the age. Like Death of the Fox, The Succession brims with accurate historical details and vivid images presented in a precisely modulated diction suggesting but wisely not literally reproducing Elizabethan and Jacobean language.

The novels share a number of characters, most notably the two monarchs of the latter's subtitle. In The Succession James is presented in a somewhat more positive light. As we never did in the earlier novel, here we enter the Queen's...