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Summary
Summary
Elizabethan England comes alive as its young queen struggles to stop a serial killer who uses fire as a weapon. From commoner to courtier, from the delights of rural England to the streets of teeming London, the queen and her coterie turn detectors in Karen Harper's acclaimed mystery series. Smitten with spring fever, Elizabeth Tudor escapes London for fantastical Nonsuch Palace in the sweet Surrey countryside. There she hopes to relax and pose for the official royal portrait for which she is holding a competition. Elizabeth is both delighted and dismayed when her young court artist, Gil Sharpe, returns early from schooling in Italy, where he has also been spying for the crown.But one of her artists is burned to death, and portraits of the queen are going up in flames. When she hears that her rival, the dangerous Mary, Queen of Scots, has been peering in mirrors and announcing, "I see the next queen of England!" Elizabeth summons her Privy Plot Council.Has the arsonist been sent by foreign foes or is it someone in her own court? Or is the "running boy" apparition really a ghost out to avenge a terrible past tragedy caused by the Tudors?Time is running out, because the enemy who stalks the queen means to destroy not only her portraits and artists, but her very life.
Author Notes
Karen Harper is also the author of a number of contemporary suspense & historical novels. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, & Naples, Florida.
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Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Harper's enjoyable seventh historical (after 2003's The Queene's Christmas), set in the spring of 1565, one of Elizabeth's prot?g?s, the portrait artist Gil Sharpe, returns to London from studying in Italy two years early. Within days of Gil joining the rest of the court at Nonsuch Castle in Surrey, a fellow artist and his serving boy die in a mysterious fire. When another artist's work shows signs of scorching, Gil becomes a suspect in the crimes, and his evasiveness about his early return from Italy undermines Elizabeth's confidence in him. An ingenious plot is afoot that preys on the queen's fear of fire, a plot that may involve one of her dearest and most trusted friends and advisers. But which one? Even members of the queen's privy council aren't above suspicion. Is the plot promoted by her Roman Catholic cousin Mary, Queen of Scots? In her attempts to unmask the conspirators, the young Elizabeth reveals a lighter, less formal side of her character; she's not afraid to hitch up her skirts and run when someone she cares about seems threatened. Such actual historical figures as the dour Sir William Cecil, the queen's secretary, and alchemist Dr. John Dee add color to this well-researched mystery. Agent, Meg Ruley at Jane Rotrosen. (Feb. 10) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Elizabeth I's Privy Plot Council serves her secretly, and the queen herself is often at the center of solving the mysteries the council uncovers. As this latest installment in the series begins, the queen is having her official portrait painted by several artists, including a young man just back from studying in Italy. When one of the artists is burned in his tent with his apprentice, and the portrait of another is slashed, Elizabeth calls in Dr. Dee, a polymath who shows her how fires can be started using mirrors to concentrate light. The Italian painter has a different use for mirrors, the camera obscura, which he is sworn to keep hidden. Elizabeth's father Henry VIII's wanton destruction of an entire town and his building of a fabulous castle in its place also figure mightily in the plot, which stretches credulity only in its climactic rooftop battle between the queen and the murderer. Harper, as usual, makes full use of historical minutiae and does so imaginatively. --GraceAnne DeCandido Copyright 2005 Booklist
Kirkus Review
As she asserts absolute control over her image and most parts of English government, Queen Elizabeth I decrees a competition for a royal portrait. Political, yes, competitive, certainly, but it also proves unexpectedly dangerous. Moving her court from London to Nonesuch Palace, her father's whimsical architectural masterpiece in the country--where she can keep a close eye on her elderly companion, Lady Katherine Ashley, who's being cared for by nursemaid Floris Minton--the queen sits for portraits by three painters: Lavinia Teerlinc, Will Kendale, and Henry Heatherly. Much to the artists' displeasure, Elizabeth's protÉgÉ, young painter Gilbert Sharp, joins the competition upon returning from an Italian apprenticeship. When Kendale's tent in the encampment outside Nonesuch goes up in flames, killing the painter and his boy-toy, Elizabeth commands the skills of scientist John Dee, who notices an unusual burn pattern and a trussed-up exit, clues that point to arson and murder courtesy of an exotic incendiary device. Elizabeth, haunted by memories of a fire in her youth, resumes her unlikely and anachronistic role as detective, worrying as signs point in turn to Gil, to Dee's pretty second wife, and even back to injustices perpetrated by her father, Henry VIII. Elizabeth (The Queene's Christmas, 2003, etc.) makes an appealingly courageous detective if you can swallow Harper's anachronistic portrait of the monarch as action hero. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Now in her early thirties, Elizabeth I wants to approve an "official" portrait for distribution in the realm. Three portrait contenders accompany Elizabeth and the court to the mythical Nonsuch Palace, where an arsonist's fire consumes an artist's tent and its two occupants. Elizabeth leaps into action, has the corpses and tents examined, prods her "privy plot council" into motion, and confronts further acts of the pyromaniac. A truly vibrant protagonist, thoroughly satisfying characterization, attention to detail, and credible plotting mark this as an outstanding historical. Harper, the author of six other Elizabeth I mysteries, lives in Columbus, OH, and Naples, FL. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
