Review
'Beautifully done . . . alive and tremendously engrossing'
(Daily Telegraph )
'A colourful history lesson . . . exciting narrative twists'
(Sunday Telegraph )
‘Enjoyable, bloody and brutish’
(Guardian )
'An engrossing thriller'
(Washington Post )
'An excellent debut'
(Publishers Weekly )
'Captivates and carries one along through the strength of its plot and its intelligent main character'
(Dallas Morning News )
‘The joy of this book is the way it interweaves commonly known history with the story. The atmosphere and attention to detail will commend this book to devotees of the period’
(Crimesquad )
Product Description
England is close to war. Within days the axe could fall on the neck of Mary Queen of Scots, and Spain is already gathering a battle fleet to avenge her.
Tensions in Elizabeth I’s government are at breaking point. At the eye of the storm is John Shakespeare, chief intelligencer in the secret service of Sir Francis Walsingham. When an intercept reveals a plot to assassinate England’s ‘sea dragon’, Francis Drake, Shakespeare is ordered to protect him. With Drake on land fitting out his ships, he is frighteningly vulnerable. If he dies, England will be open to invasion.
In a London rife with rumour, Shakespeare must decide which leads to follow, which to ignore. When a high-born young woman is found mutilated and murdered at an illicit printing house, it is political gunpowder – and he has no option but to investigate.
But why is Shakespeare shadowed at every turn by the brutal Richard Topcliffe, the blood-drenched priest-hunter who claims intimacy with Queen Elizabeth herself? What is Topcliffe’s interest in a housemaid, whose baby has been stolen? And where do two fugitive Jesuit priests fit into the puzzle, one happy to die for God, the other to kill for Him?
From the splendour and intrigue of the royal court, to the sleek warships of Her Majesty’s Navy and the teeming brothels of Southwark, Shakespeare soon learns that nothing is as it seems . . .
About the Author
Author Rory Clements has had a long and successful newspaper career including being Features Editor and Associate Editor of Today, Editor of the Daily Mail’s Good Health Pages and, most recently, Editor of the health section at the Evening Standard. He is now writing full-time in an idyllic corner of Norfolk.
'I have a healthy obsession with the 16th century,’ says Clements. ‘I love the world as it then was, the characters, the conspiracies and the extraordinary resolve of people who were willing to cast themselves adrift into uncharted oceans with no way of knowing whether they would ever return. I wanted to explore, too, the contrast between the barbarity of men like the licensed sadist Richard Topcliffe and the humanity of William Shakespeare, the glitter and glamour of Elizabeth’s court and the squalor of the streets. So different and yet so similar to the world we now inhabit with its religious tensions and great movements of people.'
