Really enjoyed this book. I've wanted to read SJ Parris for some time, and I'd happily read more after this! I adore books set in the 15-16th Centuries so this was right up my street.
It's a great start to what promises to be a strong new series.

Another captivating read from S. J. Parris, the perfect mix of history and suspense and I loved Sophia de Wolfe.
Having not read any of the previous books in this series this book stands on its own merit but I am now looking forward to reading the other books.

Highly recommended.

A murder mystery set during the Elizabethan era and featuring an unusal, charismatic and adventurous female protagonist. However, the narrative was slow and I could not finish the novel.

A 16th century'who-dunnit'. When a girl is murdered, Sophia sets about finding her murderer. A really rivetting story set in London with some great historical surprises.

SJ Parris is best known for her series of historical crime/espionage novels set during the later Elizabethan era (1580s) and featuring a fictionalised version of Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno who lived in London at that time and was suspected of being a spy for Queen Elizabeth. Parris has now spun off one of the minor characters from that series to spearhead a series of her own that picks up where Bruno left off (given that Bruno returned to Italy and was jailed in 1593 and died in 1600). Traitor’s Legacy, set in late 1598, features Sophia de Wolfe, former spy now with a new life and new identity, but finding that she cannot outrun her past and given her skills, maybe does not want to.
In the prologue of Traitor’s Legacy a group of players repossess the materials of a theatre from land that they have been evicted from with a view to rebuilding the theatre on the other side of the river. That group, led by a man called Burbage performs plays by a young playwright from Stratford called Will Shakespeare. The next morning, on the site of old theatre the body of a young woman is discovered. Sophia de Winter is brought in by Robert Cecil, Queen Elizabeth’s new spymaster as the girl is the ward of the wealthy North family but more than that a cipher has been found on her body that was only used by Sophia when she worked as a spy for one of Cecil’s predecessors. Sophia is tied further to the mystery when one of the players, Tobie, is arrested for the murder because, unknown to many, Tobie is the son she was forced to give up as a baby many years before.
Parris builds on this opening to create a fast paced, engaging murder mystery that takes Sophie and her fellow former spy (and playwright and unrequited love) Anthony Munday across London. Along the way she is able to tell the story of the Irish Rebellion and the Elizabethan military operations in Ireland, the ongoing war with the Catholics, supported by the Spanish Government, the impending death of Elizabeth I, and the wide gulf between the haves and have-nots in 16th Century England.
Traitor’s Legacy is a murder mystery/thriller with the lot – shadowy figures, secret identities, tight escapes across snowy rooftops, breaking and entering and sword fights. All anchored around real historical events and characters and driven by a feisty, loyal and resourceful main character who, while not anachronistic, chafes against the strictures of the society in which she lives. The Bruno Giordano series ran for seven books, Traitor’s Legacy opens the door for another, engaging, long running series.

Traitor’s Legacy is the first in a new series featuring Sophia de Wolfe, former agent of Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham. We discover pretty quickly that Sophia has had an eventful life including a previous marriage, an illegitimate son given up for adoption and coming under suspicion of murder. In fact, so detailed is her back story I found myself checking that I hadn’t missed an earlier book in the series. That is until I realised she had featured (then going by the name Sophia Underhill) in some of the books in the author’s Giordano Bruno series which I read years ago. However, although new readers might find them wishing for more detail about her colourful past, it does mean you don’t need to have read the Giordano Bruno books to enjoy this one.

Sophia is now a widow with a stepson who resents the fact she has inherited her late husband’s wealth. Her stepson is a drunkard, a gambler and a spendthrift with a potential for violence. Although Sophia’s was a marriage of convenience arranged by Walsingham to ensure her safety, she developed a real affection for her late husband Humphrey, often recalling his wise and supportive advice. Having said that, widowhood has given Sophia a certain freedom. ‘One of the great advantages of being a widow with her own money is that, for the first time in her life, she doesn’t have to submit to any man telling her what she can and can’t do.’

Our first encounter with Sophia is during a duel with her fencing master, so we know from the off she’s someone to be reckoned with. She’s resourceful, intrepid and resolute. ‘Here you are, like some kind of truffle-hound, determined to sniff out the truth and dig it up.’ Sophia has faced many obstacles in her life but has never given up trying to overcome them. ‘She has been raging all her life, for as long as she can remember, at one thing or another (usually the actions of men.’

Following the discovery of the dead girl’s body, Sophia is reunited with Anthony Munday, now a playwright for Richard Burbage’s theatre company, but formerly a pursuivant hunting Catholic priests smuggled into the country. This involved him working for Richard Topcliffe, notorious for his brutal interrogations. Munday now has a wife and children but his attachment to Sophia means that when her connection to the death of the girl becomes very personal he can’t help but get involved. I enjoyed the tease of the relationship between Sophia and Anthony. They’re certainly comrades but could they become something more to each other?

The plot revolves around the question of what was the motive for the murder? Was it an act of jealous rage by a spurned lover? Was it for financial gain given the dead girl was a wealthy heiress? Or was there a political angle to the murder? Answering those questions means taking on the rich and powerful, and Sophia and Anthony both find themselves in risky situations as a result. As she says at one point, ‘I feel with every step we’re tangling ourselves deeper in something that can’t end well’.

The book is set in 1598 towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign when the question of the succession was in a lot of minds and there was turmoil in Ireland where Catholics were suspected of supporting the enemies of England, notably Spain. Alongside the fictional characters, there are real historical figures including the Queen’s favourite, the Earl of Essex, his wife Frances, daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, and Thomas Phelippes, Walsingham’s cryptographer who deciphered the coded letters of the Babington Plot conspirators. There’s even a walk-on part for William Shakespeare.

Traitor’s Legacy has everything I look for in a historical mystery: a deliciously complex plot, an engaging main character, a varied supporting cast and lots of period detail. It moves along at pace and, most importantly as far as I’m concerned, the ending is all nicely set up for the next book in the series. If you loved the Giordano Bruno series or you’re a fan of historical mysteries I think you’ll enjoy this as much as I did.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

Traitor’s Legacy is set in the final years of Elizabethan England and follows Sophia de Wolfe, a wealthy widow and former spy. When a young girl is found murdered, a note written in one of Sophia’s old ciphers is discovered with the body. She’s soon pulled out of retirement to uncover the truth behind the girl’s death.

I had so much fun reading this book! It was definitely an impulsive NetGalley request. I saw that it was set in Tudor England and, even though I’ve never read a murder mystery before, I thought, "Yes please!" I’m so glad I did.

The beginning is a little slow, but once it gets going, I was completely hooked. The writing is sharp and engaging, and the characters feel really well developed. I absolutely loved Sophia. She’s clever, capable and completely self-reliant. The plot is packed with twists and turns that kept me guessing right to the end, and I rarely saw them coming.

I’m already looking forward to what’s next for Sophia de Wolfe. I’m also off to buy myself a trophy copy for my shelves.

Huge thanks to HarperCollinsUK for the eARC!

Sophia de Wolfe is a fantastic protagonist in this first book of a new series by SJ Parris. set in the same world as her Giordano Bruno books. She’s an ex spy for Walsingham who is living a quiet life after his death. When a note using her cipher is found with the body of a young heiress, she is bound to investigate. The murder appears to be at the heart of the court, and by investigating Sophia places herself in danger, nit least because she has a secret of her own which she does not want to be discovered.
Parris is always excellent at portraying the Elizabethan court and its shadowy side and this book is no exception. Sophia is spirited and intelligent and I look forward to the next book in this series.

I know S.J. Parris’s Giordano Bruno historical thrillers, set in Elizabethan England, are very popular, but I’ve only read one of them – Sacrilege – and wasn’t particularly impressed. When I saw that she’d started to write a new series, of which Traitor’s Legacy is the first, I thought it would be a good opportunity to give her another try. As it turned out, this is actually a spin-off featuring some of the same characters (but not Bruno himself, although he is mentioned once or twice).

Traitor’s Legacy is set in the winter of 1598 and follows Sophia de Wolfe, formerly an agent of the Queen’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham. Now Walsingham is dead and Secretary of State Robert Cecil has stepped into his role. It’s Cecil who summons Sophia when a girl’s body is found in the foundations of a building site with a scrap of paper tucked inside her clothing. The paper contains a message written in a cipher used by Sophia during her time as a spy, suggesting that someone is trying to link her to the murder. But who would want to do that and how could the secret cipher have fallen into anyone else’s hands?

The girl is quickly identified as Agnes Lovell, a wealthy heiress and a ward of the powerful nobleman Sir Thomas North, who had been planning to marry her to his son, Edmund. It’s possible that the murder could have been committed for political reasons – North had gained a reputation for corruption during a recent military campaign in Ireland – but there also seems to be a connection with the ambitious Earl of Essex, the Queen’s favourite courtier. However, things take a more personal turn for Sophia when suspicion falls on her own illegitimate son, Tobie. Sophia will do whatever it takes to clear his name, but this is made more difficult by the fact that Tobie himself has no idea that she is his mother!

Having only read one of the Giordano Bruno novels, I’m not sure how much we actually learn about Sophia in that series. I vaguely remember her from Sacrilege and presumably she’s in some of the other books as well. It’s definitely possible to follow what’s happening in this book without any prior knowledge, but I did feel there was a lot of backstory I wasn’t familiar with and had to pick up as I went along. I didn’t find Sophia entirely believable as a 16th century woman, but not wildly anachronistic either and she’s aware of the limitations placed on her by society. I liked her as a character and enjoyed following her investigations. She’s assisted by Anthony Munday, a playwright and another former spy, sometimes working together and sometimes separately which helps the story to move along.

Many of the characters in the book are people who really existed; I’ve already mentioned some of them, but we also meet others including Thomas Phelippes, Cecil’s cryptographer, and Frances Devereux, wife of the Earl of Essex. Through the character of Anthony Munday, the novel also touches on Elizabethan London’s theatrical world and the rival groups of actors, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and the Admiral’s Men. There’s a lot going on, then, but the plot, although complex, is easy enough to follow and I gradually became gripped by it. I enjoyed this book and am looking forward to meeting Sophia and her friends again as the series progresses.

I was sent a copy of Traitor’s Legacy by S. J. Parris to read and review by NetGalley. I’ve always enjoyed reading novels by S. J. Parris and this book is no exception. Quite early on in the story I felt that the protagonist Sophia de Wolfe seemed very familiar to me but it was only much later in the book that I discovered that she was a character from the Giordano Bruno novels, then everything fell into place. You certainly don’t have to read any of those books before reading this one, the first in a series, as there is enough back story to help you understand Sophia’s history – but without so much that you feel like you are re-reading words that you have read before. There is a lot to like about Traitor’s Legacy. It is really nice having a feisty female protagonist and the way the author captures London of the times is very realistic, at least as far as we know of that era in time. There are lots of twists and turns and a great cast of characters, I suggest if you love historical mystery novels then you should definitely read and enjoy!

I always like to read historical mysteries in summer, and this was such a good one! Set in the 1590s in the heart of London, it had the perfect balance of a tight, knotty plot, characters I'm interested to read more about, and lots of historical atmosphere. Definitely keen to keep reading the series!

I love mysteries and historical books so this book was right up my street.

Set in Elizabethan times, the FMC Sophie was dragged back into her old world as a spy to try and solve a murder of a young heiress.

The book is full of intrigue, secrets, twists and turns which will keep you reading.

DNF 40%
I have read work by this author before and really enjoyed the books but I could not connect with the characters or location and time with this.
The story was quite long and convoluted and the pace was very slow, but that is just a personal view.

It’s been several years since Sophia de Wolfe was in the employ of Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster. On her retirement from the trade, Walsingham had arranged a marriage for her which had turned out to be happy. But her husband has since died and she is a wealthy widow with time on her hands. She spends some of her time and money supporting The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a theatre troupe famous for the plays of their resident playwright, William Shakespeare. But Sophia’s interest is one of the young boy actors, Tobie, who is her illegitimate son though he doesn’t know it. Walsingham is also now dead, so Sophia is surprised to be summoned by his successor, Sir Robert Cecil. He tells her that the body of a young girl has been found, murdered, and she had a note on her body which was written in the cipher that used to be exclusively used by Sophia in her spying days. He sets her the task of finding out who could have got hold of the cipher but the investigation soon becomes more personal when young Tobie is arrested on suspicion of the murder. Now Sophia must find the real murderer to save her son…

I’ve popped in and out of Parris’ Giordano Bruno series over the years, in which Sophia occasionally appeared (as Sophia Underhill), but I’ve not been consistent enough to know her full back story. However, on the whole I found this one, which is being billed as the first in a new series, stands on its own merits – only occasionally did I feel I wanted to know more, like about who her lover and Tobie’s father had been. I had often wondered what Parris would do when she reached the time when Bruno was executed in real life. Being true to history is always one of her strengths, so I assumed she wouldn’t keep him alive. Transferring over to Sophia is a good idea, giving a sense of continuity to existing fans while allowing new fans to jump aboard. It also allows her to create an enjoyable new set of who will doubtless be recurring characters in future novels – Tobie, the Chamberlain’s Men, Sophia’s household staff, and another playwright, also a real person, Anthony Munday, who is in love with Sophia.

The plot in this one is very strong, and not bogged down in famous events of the time, which has sometimes been a weakness of her books in the past for me. The victim is a thirteen-year-old girl, Agnes Lovell, the orphaned ward of Sir Thomas North. Sir Thomas planned to marry her to his son as soon as she reached her majority, which would have been on her fourteenth birthday, so that the family could retain her valuable inheritance. But Agnes had fallen in love, Juliet-style, with young Tobie, a willing Romeo. As Sophia begins to delve into the mystery, she uncovers various possible suspects and motives for the murder, some of them leading all the way to the highest in the land. Justice in Elizabethan England works differently for those in high places and Sophia knows that she can’t make accusations that are more likely to lead to her own incarceration than Tobie’s freedom.

The book is peppered with real people, like Cecil, the Earl of Essex, Shakespeare, etc. Again one of the weaknesses of her previous series for me was that her main character was a real well-documented person from history, and I felt she sometimes strayed too far from his life and probable character to keep it credible. (This was a minority view – the books are highly popular with a loyal following, so I accept that my opinion is entirely subjective.) In this one, however, Sophia is fully fictional, while all the real people play more minor, secondary roles. This works much better, I feel, and gives her more scope to be inventive, which she takes advantage of here to the full.

I found it a slow starter which is fairly common in the first of a new series, when all the new characters and their connections have to be laid out before the main story can get going. But once it got into the plot properly, I found it increasingly gripping. Parris doesn’t have her characters speak in faux Elizabethan English thankfully, but nor does she make them overly anachronistic. Sophia is undoubtedly a strong woman with a will of her own, but she does stick more or less to the conventions of her time, and she doesn’t battle the bad guys all on her own. She does object to the subordinate position of girls and women, especially with regards to them being bought and sold in the marriage mart, but she accepts that it is as it is – she’s not a secret suffragette, though she would probably like to be.

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. The new characters all have plenty of room for development and are a likeable group, and Sophia herself has matured into a more believable character than I remember from her earlier outings. I’m very much looking forward to reading about her future adventures as the world moves towards the end of the Tudor era and into the Stuarts.

Having been some time since I read the author's previous series, it did take me a while to recognise the character of Sophia Underhill and her significance to Giordano Bruno. This Easter egg for me however, elevated the rating to a definite five stars. Even without the previous insight, the story is fast paced, intriguing, and wholly plausible. The main characters are sympathetic and well rounded, although I look forward to learning more about the steward Hillary, and suspect (hope) we may do so in future instalments.
The first half of the book did seem to have a lot of riding to and fro', with little gained, but the mystery and peril definitely ramps up in the second half, leading to an exciting climax and satisfactory ending. I am already looking forward to book two, and will probably revisit GB novels while I wait.

I like reading books set on Tudor times and this author was new to me. I didn't realise that, even though is the first on a new series, it is related to another series. I wanted to like this a lot but it was too repetitive for me and very slow.

Derring-do and skullduggery – oh, that history in school had been as exciting – with fine, fine writing and intriguing characters thrown in, make for a truly engaging and zippy read. The weaving of fact and fiction in an Elizabethan setting, murder, spies abounding, splendid sword fights, not to mention the excellent dialogue, ensure time is well spent in reading Traitor’s Legacy, the first in a new series from S.J. Parris.

I found the first part of the book was slow going but as the book went it got a bit better.

Sofia ends up investigating the death of a young girl. A boy of 15 is accused of the murder of the girl. We see the things that Sofia goes through and the dangers that she finds herself in. She has people helping her investigate the death. Will she find the culprit or will the boy stay in prison only time will tell.

I was looking forward to reading the book but as I say it was a slow burner and got a bit more exciting as the book went on. I liked the characters and they all worked well together.

Sophia de Wolfe is a rich widow who used to be a spy and now her past is catching up with her. The body of a young heiress has been found and pinned to her is a note written in a cipher that identifies Sophia, in addition the person accused of murder is Sophia's secret son. In the depths of winter London is not a safe place to be and Sophia must save her son.
Parris' previous novels have featured Giordano Bruno, a real-life individual given fictional stories. Now a character from those books, Sophia Underhill, is brought to the fore and the timeframe shifted to the end of Elizabeth's reign. The knowledge of London in the very late 16th century is excellent and there are some wonderful characters evoked, as well as known personae. I loved the plot, clever and complicated but simple enough in motive, but I really loved the little touches especially the appearance of William Shakespeare and the hints at him using actions in this plot as inspiration.

This is an author whom I have been wanting to read for quite a while now. This seemed to be the perfect time, as Traitor's Legacy is the first book in a new series. The main character is Sofia de Wolfe, and her story is beginning to emerge, but I am sure there is more to come!

Sofia has had a mixed past. She is recently widowed and has been called back into service for Robert Cecil. She had worked for Lord Walsingham, and Cecil is aware of her skill set. The era is that of Elizabeth I. Walsingham was a spymaster to the Queen.

The case is that of a young woman found dead, the culprit is thought to be a young man who is an actor. As Sofia is a supporter of the p[layers she is asked to help, but there is a lot more at stake here than that of a murdered woman and a man held in prison.

The setting and era of this story are great, and there is so much detail that has been included about the politics, society and living conditions. The research that has gone into this is very good, and while there is a lot of detail, it is blended in with the story. The mystery of the murder takes the plot into darker and more dangerous areas for Sofia and also those who are helping her. Working in secrets, lies, and manipulation leaves Sofia unsure who to trust. While she may have status, she has not had the standing she once may have had since the death of her husband. There is a very good amount of backstory to Sofia's character, and as I mentioned earlier, I do feel there is a lot more to come.

If you are a fan of historical fiction set during the Elizabethan period that involves known figures of the time, playwrights, murders and a whole lot of scandal and mystery, then this is a series that you may find interesting. I really enjoyed it and I would be happy to recommend it.