Review

This is an excellent, hard and uncompromising novel, Taking the reader through the dark murky world of espionage in England in the early 1600’s. The brutality of the clash of protestant and catholic worlds, all narrowed down to a single plot, an attempted act of terrorism that still resounds through the country today such was its audacity.

James Jackson takes very little mercy on the reader, providing a view of London and wider England in all its filth, muck and mire, with betrayals, backstabbing, murder and mayhem. This is not a gentle time in this lands history and it is right it should be shown warts and all. When the author couples that with a twisting winding plot and disparate hunters many of which controlled by the spider at the center of the web of intrigue Robert Cecil you get a book that grabs you and doesn’t let go until the final page.

A very interesting and very powerful book, highly recommended

(Parm)