Black Death
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
As plague stalks the streets of 16th century London, Christopher Marlowe is drawn into a baffling murder investigation where nothing is as it first appears.
"Kit, I know we have never been friends, but you are the only man in London to whom I can write. Someone is trying to kill me”.
September, 1592. Christopher Marlowe had never liked Robert Greene when he was alive. But when the former Cambridge scholar is found dead in a cheap London boarding house, shortly after sending Kit a desperate letter, Marlowe feels duty bound to find out who killed him – and why.
What secrets did Robert Greene take with him to the grave? And why is the Queen’s spymaster, Sir Robert Cecil, taking such a keen interest in the case? As plague stalks the streets of London and the stage manager of the Rose Theatre disappears without trace just days before the opening of Marlowe’s new play, the playwright-sleuth finds himself in the midst of a baffling murder investigation – where nothing is as it first appears.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Trow makes the most of his setting 1592 London beset by the bubonic plague in his atmospheric 10th whodunit featuring Christopher Marlowe (after 2018's Queen's Progress). Marlowe, a playwright and intelligence operative, is surprised to receive a letter from Robert Greene, a university scholar, whom he knew and disliked while they were students at Cambridge. Greene is dead by the time Marlowe reads the letter, in which Greene says he believes someone is trying to kill him. Despite their past antipathy, Marlowe feels obligated to pursue the matter and undertakes an unofficial exhumation. His resolve to find Greene's killer is strengthened when Marlowe's friend, magician John Dee, reports that the remains Marlowe brought him to test reveal evidence of poison. Meanwhile, fear of the spread of the Black Death forces the government into extreme measures, including closing down all the playhouses, but when Marlowe seeks to overturn the decree, his employer, Elizabeth I's spymaster, Robert Cecil, is, for some reason, more interested in the mystery of Greene's death. This is a strong entry in a series that's gotten better with each book.
