Enjoyable historical thriller set in London during the turbulent reign of James 1st which also manages to be an interesting discussion on the disputed authorship of Shakespeare's works.
Martin Stephen is himself an academic, so it is unsurprising that he is obviously genuinely interested in examining the thorny question of the attribution of William Shakespeare's plays. Personally, I have always found a slight whiff of snobbery in scholars who have a problem with the humble son of a provincial glove maker being the greatest writer in English ever born. Why do we need to look for noble highborn author such as Bacon, when contemporaries (e.g.Ben Jonson) are obviously happy to acknowledge William Shakespeare as the writer of his own work? Stephen makes the question of authorship itself seem important, and in an ironic postscript perhaps warns other academics that it is a dangerous subject to examine too deeply...Surprising that Robert Greenes's contemporary attack on "Shake-scene" which would have fitted in very well with the theories outlined in this book are not referenced by Stephen.
The intrigues and polticising our hero Henry Gresham is involved with veer between James Bond and Machiavelli but are dealt with briskly enough. The task that the dying Robert Cecil gives to Gresham could, perhaps, have been made more obviously vital to the good of the realm, but a level of uncertainty is inevitable in a shady spy caper, which is what this book is.
Having a pox ridden Christopher Marlowe return from the dead to act as an insane villain seems rather silly, though it is also amusing and memorable.
All in all, this is a competent adventure yarn with plenty of historical information to impart and academic opinions to give.
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