Mike Ripley retired from regularly reviewing new crime fiction after more than 32 years (and almost 3,000 reviews) at the critical coal-face. He now restricts himself to the worthy or unusual titles which tempt him out of retirement.
Justin Scott has written numerous historical thrillers (as well as some damn fine contemporary ones), but I am not aware that he has gone as far back as Elizabethan England before. In The Sister Queens he does so with great relish, following Cole Porter’s advice that it pays to brush up your Shakespeare, which is not surprising as his protagonist is none other than playwright-for-hire Will.
Except Shakespeare is not so much hired as made an offer he cannot refuse to write a play about the late Mary Queen of Scots and her cousin (and executioner) Queen Elizabeth I, who is nearing the end of her reign and, as she is childless, succession to the English throne is a hot topic. The year is 1600 and political intrigue fans the flames of Protestant/Catholic rivalries, sometimes literally. Any play about Catholic Mary and Protestant Elizabeth is bound to stir things up and our poet hero Shakespeare finds himself caught between two competing networks of spies, one determined that the play goes ahead – and whips up the ‘groundlings’ – the other seemingly happy to bump off the upstart crow.
Will follows a trail of clues about Mary (all good writers do their research), meeting the high and low of London life, including Royal spymasters, aristocrats, publicans, fencing-masters, whores and, of course, actors. Among them, a man with a reputation as the best seal-cracker in the business and another described ‘as three-faced a cozening rakehell you ever saw’.
As in all good Shakespeare, there are sword-fights, ghosts offering warnings, a shipwreck and a lost stranger washed ashore in a strange land – Kent actually. Despite some reluctance by the populace to go south of the river even for a new play, there is plenty of drama here and the final reveal involving Will’s mother is positively – well – Shakespearean.
For fans of Elizabethan mysteries, this one will be a palpable hit.
