A Prisoner in Malta

November 2, 2015
Edgar-winner DePoy (December’s Thorn) transforms playwright Christopher Marlowe into a swashbuckling action hero in this solid first in a new historical series. In 1583, the 19-year-old Marlowe, a student at Cambridge, is pulled away from his studies by a close friend, Dr. Rodrigo Lopez, on the orders of Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I’s spymaster. Walsingham wants the teenager’s help in saving England “from deceit of the highest magnitude.” Catholic conspirators plan to topple the queen, but Walsingham’s only source of vital information for thwarting them is an Englishman held prisoner in Malta. Marlowe and Lopez undertake the dangerous assignment, even as a warrant has been issued for Marlowe’s arrest for murdering a fellow student reputed to be a bully. Witnesses saw Marlowe arguing with the dead man, Walter Pygott, and the corpse was found concealed in his rooms. DePoy piles on the twists and introduces some humor into the tense story line, which should find favor with Susannah Gregory readers.

November 15, 2015
The chronicler of Georgia folklorist Fever Devilin (December's Thorn, 2013, etc.) turns to the dawn of Christopher Marlowe's espionage career. It's no mystery why Elizabethan spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham recruits Marlowe from his studies at Cambridge at the tender age of 19. The young man has a rare skill with persuasive words, an equal skill with dagger and rapier, an actor's knack for role-playing, and apparently no fear of confrontation or death. Since he seems indifferent to whether he lives or dies, the great game is merely a game to him. So he's a natural to pack off to Malta along with royal physician Rodrigo Lopez, to whom he owes a debt of honor, to rescue an agent Walsingham must speak to personally if the double-pronged Spanish plot against the queen--invasion from without, insurrection by traitors loyal to Mary Queen of Scots within--is to be foiled. Rescuing the prisoner from that Malta dungeon is so easy that there are bound to be further troubles. These involve a code based on the Douay translation of the Bible favored by Catholics, assassins from Spain and Arabia, highly questionable clergymen, many poniards thrust against (and sometimes into) hostile bodies, endless speculation about Walsingham's true motives, and the authorities' lingering suspicion that Marlowe celebrated his departure from university by killing Cambridge bully Walter Pygott, whose own father couldn't stand the sight of him. Naturally there'll be time for a new love whom the apprentice spy warns, "If I have to keep rescuing you over and over again...I'll never finish college." Ebullient persiflage spiced with high-level intrigue, a covey of double and triple agents, and enough action scenes for a summer movie. Eat your heart out, James Bond.

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November 15, 2015
Cambridge student Christopher Marlowe, 19, already has a reputation: as a wordsmith, lover, fighter (with dagger and rapier), actor, and spectacularly convincing liar, who also shows no fear. So, in 1583, Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's spymaster, recruits the young man to thwart a plot by papists in Spain and England to kill the queen and install Mary of Scots, a Catholic, on the throne. With his close friend Rodrigo Lopez, the queen's physician, Marlowe is tasked to rescue a valuable English spy who's imprisoned in a well-guarded dungeon in Malta and return the prisoner, who has vital information, to England. Marlowe faces two problems: he is wanted in Cambridge for the murder of a classmate whose body was found in his room, and he soon calculates that there are deceptions everywhere he turns, making it difficult to know who can be trusted. Rising body count aside, this is a lighthearted treatment of deadly serious palace intrigue and the start of a series featuring the witty and multitalented Marlowe. A winning blend of history and mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)