Any historical novelist worth his salt makes the material of his tale faithful to the realities of the age he wishes to revive, banishing stereotypes and bringing alive figures dimmed by the passage of years. Mary Renault did this in her 1956 novel, "The Last of the Wine."… In "The King Must Die,"… she does it again so well, in fact, that it puts her in the top echelon of historical novelists.

For her material this time Miss Renault has turned to the old Greek legend about Theseus, the hero-king of Athens….

Miss Renault does not tell the legend in its entirety, but culls from it and improvises. Nor does she rely alone on the eternal appeal of folklore material for the fascination of her tale. She ventures into the complex pre-Hellenic era confidently and, with imagination and insight, takes the myth out of mythology by creating a persuasively...