MARTYR is the first in the acclaimed & bestselling John Shakespeare Elizabethan mystery series by Rory Clements winner of the Ellis Peters Historical Fiction Award. ' Does for Elizabeth's reign what CJ Sansom does for Henry VIII's' Sunday Times England is close to war. Within days the axe could fall on the neck of Mary Queen of Scots & Spain is already gathering a battle fleet to avenge her. Tensions in Elizabeth I's government are at breaking point. At the eye of the storm is John Shakespeare chief intelligencer in the secret service of Sir Francis Walsingham. When an intercept reveals a plot to assassinate England's 'sea dragon' Francis Drake Shakespeare is ordered to protect him. With Drake on land fitting out his ships he is frighteningly vulnerable. If he dies England will be open to invasion. In a London rife with rumour Shakespeare must decide which leads to follow which to ignore. When a high-born young woman is found mutilated & murdered at an illicit printing house it is political gunpowder
- & he has no option but to investigate. But why is Shakespeare shadowed at every turn by the brutal Richard Topcliffe the blood-drenched priest-hunter who claims intimacy with Queen Elizabeth herself? What is Topcliffe's interest in a housemaid whose baby has been stolen? & where do two fugitive Jesuit priests fit into the puzzle one happy to die for God the other to kill for Him? From the splendour & intrigue of the royal court to the sleek warships of Her Majesty's Navy & the teeming brothels of Southwark Shakespeare soon learns that nothing is as it seems.. .