The Scholars of Night

Whipping modern war games and Renaissance skullduggery into a frothy blend, this long out-of-print 1988 spy novel is part of the rediscovery of World Fantasy Award winner Ford’s legacy. Nicholas Hansard, history professor and consultant to the shadowy White Group, is grieving his mentor’s death when he’s given a copy of a lost play by Christopher Marlowe. His efforts to authenticate the text are complicated by the White Group’s need to identify his mentor’s spy network and discover what military secret he was plotting to turn over to the Soviets. Nicholas is fortuitously assisted by Ellen Maxwell, a fellow scholar whose resemblance to Nicholas’s dead wife is a further distraction for him. Ford (1957–2006) injects historical speculation about Marlowe and a plot to kill Queen Elizabeth into the deadly high-tech espionage and naval warfare, making a mélange that should catch the interest of readers of alternate histories and spy novels alike.[em] (Sept.) [/em]