Traitor

From Rory Clements, winner of the Ellis Peters Historical Fiction Award, comes Traitor, the fourth in his acclaimed John Shakespeare Elizabethan mystery series.

“Does for Elizabeth’s reign what C. J. Sansom does for Henry VIII’s” (Sunday Times).

The Elizabethan navy has a secret weapon: an optical instrument so powerful it gives England unassailable superiority at sea. Spain will stop at nothing to steal it and seize the two men who understand its secrets – William Ivory, the ‘Queen’s Eye’, and the magician Dr Dee. With a second Armada threatened, intelligencer John Shakespeare is sent north to escort Dr Dee to safety. But he finds Dee’s host, the Earl of Derby, dying in agony, apparently poisoned.

Who wants him dead and why? What lies behind the lynching of a recusant priest, and how is the mysterious but beautiful Lady Eliska involved?

While Shakespeare attempts to untangle a plot that points to treachery at the very highest reaches of government, he also faces serious accusations far closer to home. With so much at stake, must he choose between family and his duty to Queen and country?