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Trow (Lestrade and the Devil's Own and 15 other Inspector Lestrade mysteries) kicks off an intriguing new historical series starring Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. In 1583, Marlowe is about to graduate from Cambridge, where he has established a reputation as a daredevil troublemaker. When a comrade in carousing, Ralph Whitingside, turns up dead in his King's College room, Marlowe doesn't buy the official verdict of suicide. Suspecting that his friend was murdered, Marlowe seeks out the queen's enigmatic magus, Dr. John Dee, whose expertise in poisons may help him prove his case. Whitingside isn't the last to die as the amateur investigator gathers evidence to ascertain the murderer's identity. Trow doesn't evoke 16th-century England quite as persuasively as such writers in the subgenre as Rory Clements and S.J. Parris, but the ending points to potentially more compelling plots in future installments. (Oct.)