Monday, May 30, 2011

Revenger-Rory Clements

Revenger
Rory Clements
Bantam, Jun 21 2011, $25.00
ISBN 9780385342841

John Shakespeare retired from field work to be with his wife Catherine and their four years old daughter Mary. He teaches at a small school and finds his two females superseding the excitement he had working for Queen Elizabeth.

Since he has been a family man since leaving the intelligencer field, John is surprised when the Earl of Essex asks him to investigate the disappearance of the Roanoke colonists who are rumored to be safe and sound in London. Essex’s rival Queen Elizabeth's Privy Councilor spymaster Sir Robert Cecil does not trust the Earl who he thinks might have seditious schemes. As such, Sir Cecil orders Shakespeare to serve the Queen as he did five years ago (see Martyr).

Revenger is a great Elizabethan mystery as readers will feel they are in London during a tumultuous period in the Queen’s reign with the Spanish war on-going, a plague devastating London, and intrigue inside her royal court. The mystery of Roanoke is handled deftly while Shakespeare proves worthy as he holds the plot together while not shocking to him finds strange even perverted bedfellows on both sides of the argument between Cecil and Essex.

Harriet Klausner

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