Eleventh Hour: a Tudor mystery featuring Christopher Marlowe

May 15, 2017
Set in 1590, Trow’s delightful eighth Kit Marlowe mystery (after 2015’s Secret World) finds the playwright, poet, and spy looking into the death of Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I’s spymaster. Marlowe suspects poisoning, the only clue a scant trace of residue in the goblet that Walsingham drank from just before his demise. Marlowe juggles the demands of theater owners for new material with his investigations, which often entail galloping around the country to meet with the outstanding minds of the period, including John Dee (famed occultist, mathematician, and sometime advisor to the queen) and Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland (aka the Wizard Earl). Many other real people sashay though the book, including Sir Walter Raleigh, impresario Philip Henslowe, poet Thomas Watson, and Will Shaxsper, “a second-rate actor and a fourth-rate playwright.” Insights into political chicanery, the rise of science over magic, and atavistic theatrical bitchery propel readers ever onward.

May 15, 2017
Elizabethan theater, intrigue, dark arts, and the man of many talents who takes on all three.When Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen's Spymaster, suffers a stroke, his death is hardly unexpected. But his right-hand man, Nicholas Faunt, is suspicious enough to call upon Christopher "Kit" Marlowe, cobbler's son, ex-choirboy, Master of Arts from Cambridge University, poet, playwright, and "projectioner" for her majesty. Faunt brings Kit a goblet of evidence, the lees of the last wine Walsingham drank, and asks him to examine it. Kit worked for Walsingham, too, and he knows just the man to help him determine whether the wine was poisoned: Dr. John Dee, the queen's magus. Dee belongs to a secret society, the School of Night, every member of which had the means and motive to kill Walsingham. In company with Dee's borrowed manservant, Kit visits the others one by one, including Henry Percy, the wizard Earl of Northumberland, at whose Sussex estate someone aims a crossbow at Kit, and Sir Walter Ralegh, whom Kit interrupts at a compromising moment and has to duel as a matter of honor. In between sword fighting and arrow dodging, Kit follows the success of his latest play at the Rose Theatre and Bear Pit, to the envy of the less talented, line-stealing William Shaxsper, relying on his gifts as darling of the Muses and his cunning as a servant of the queen to set a scene and play a diabolical role in exposing the true killer. Fans of Trow's charismatic playwright hero (Secret World, 2015, etc.) will welcome deeper insight into his complex character in this bawdy, witty, and mostly historically informed eighth adventure.

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May 1, 2017
After Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I's spymaster, dies, apparently of apoplexy, Walsingham's right-hand man, Nicholas Faunt, convinced his master was poisoned, turns to playwright, sometime spy, and brilliant amateur sleuth Christopher Marlowe to prove his case. Reluctantly, Marlowe takes on the case and soon discovers a viper's next of suspects, including Robert Cecil, who has eyed the spymaster role for years. Could his ambition have been at the root of Walsingham's murder? Marlowe is also looking closely at a group called the School of the Night, some of whose members, including Sir Walter Raleigh, have deep knowledge of poisons and the dark arts as well as motives for wanting Walsingham dead. As always, Trow provides fascinating period authenticity, a crackling plot, strong characters, and plenty of twists. Must reading for devotees of Elizabethan crime.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)