Eleventh Hour

by M. J. Trow

Overview

Christopher Marlowe must discover who murdered the queen’s spymaster in this absorbing historical mystery.

April, 1590. The queen’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, is dead, leaving a dangerous power vacuum. His former right hand man, Nicholas Faunt, believes he was poisoned and has ordered Kit Marlowe to discover who killed him.

To find the answers, Marlowe must consult the leading scientists and thinkers in the country. But as he questions the members of the so-called School of Night, the playwright-turned-spy becomes convinced that at least one of them is hiding a deadly secret. If he is to outwit the most enquiring minds in Europe and unmask the killer within, Marlowe must devise an impossibly ingenious plan.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780727893420
Publisher:	Severn House Publishers
Publication date:	04/30/2018
Series:	Kit Marlowe Series , #8
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.55(w) x 8.74(h) x (d)

About the Author

M J Trow is a military historian by training and the author of the long-running Inspector Lestrade and ‘Mad Max’ Maxwell detective series, as well as several non-fiction books, including Who Killed Kit Marlowe? He lives on the Isle of Wight.

Editorial Reviews

"A crackling plot, strong characters, and plenty of twists"

Booklist

"A crackling plot, strong characters, and plenty of twists"

Booklist

05/15/2017
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. (July)

Publishers Weekly

2017-05-02
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.

Kirkus Reviews