An Elizabethan espionage thriller in which playwright Christopher Marlowe spies on Mary Queen
of Scots while navigating the perils of politics theater romance-and murder. Here Marlowe
[is] supremely capable something of a trickster a consummate liar a fiendish lover-and
someone capable of murder ... The suspense is palpable as is the sense of doom as Marlowe
finds himself in thrall to a devil's bargain (The New York Times Book Review). England 1585.
In Kit Marlowe's last year at Cambridge he is approached by Queen Elizabeth's spymaster
offering an unorthodox career opportunity: going undercover to intercept a Catholic plot to put
Mary Queen of Scots on Elizabeth's throne. Spying on Queen Mary turns out to be more than Kit
bargained for but his salary allows him to mount his first play and over the following years
he becomes the toast of London's raucous theater scene. But when Kit finds himself reluctantly
drawn back into the world of espionage and treason he realizes everything he's worked so hard
to attain-including the trust of the man he loves-could vanish in an instant. Pairing modern
language with period detail Allison Epstein brings Elizabeth's lavish court Marlowe's
colorful theater troupe and the squalor of sixteenth-century London to vivid teeming life. At
the center of the action is Kit himself-an irrepressible irreverent force of nature.
