Scorpions' Nest
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
Playwright and spy Christopher Marlowe is sent to France to locate a convicted traitor to the English crown in this Elizabethan mystery.
October, 1586. Known across London as a poet and playwright, Christopher "Kit" Marlowe, is also at the service of Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen's spymaster. Now Walsingham has dispatched Kit to the English College in Rheims, France, where he suspects the Catholic traitor Matthew Baxter is hiding.
Infiltrating the college undercover, Marlowe learns that the community has been rocked by a series of unexplained and violent deaths. Now, with the help of master codebreaker Thomas Phelippes, Marlowe must unearth a murderer, track down a traitor, and extract himself from the scorpions' nest in time to return to London and save his play from a remorseless plagiarizer.
"Kit has charm, and the English College full of exiled priests makes for an interesting setting." —Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Early in Trow's workmanlike fourth Elizabethan whodunit featuring Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (after 2012's Witch Hammer), Sir Frances Walsingham, the queen's spymaster, presides over the execution of Anthony Babbington, a Catholic gentleman accused of conspiring against the monarch, who's first hanged until nearly dead, then cut down from the scaffold and dispatched with a billhook. In an effort to root out all of Babbington's colleagues, Walsingham, who's obsessed with unearthing threats to the realm, sends Marlowe, his lead intelligencer and future playwright, to Rheims, France the site of the English College, "the cradle of every Jesuit assassin" found in England in the last 15 years. But the inherent drama of the setup isn't realized, despite the insertion of several murders for Marlowe to solve. An unexpected distraction is Trow's inordinate fondness for referring to the college as a nest of scorpions one reference to the significance of the title would more than suffice, but five is not only excessive but also heavy-handed.
