Silent Court

Trow follows up his first novel featuring Elizabethan playwright and spy Christopher Marlowe, Dark Entry (2011), with another intriguing if relatively straightforward mystery. While Elizabeth’s Machiavellian spymaster, Francis Walsingham, is less than pleased when Marlowe ignores his orders and intervenes to spare the family of a traitor who was plotting against the queen, Walsingham still counts on Marlowe to protect William the Silent, Statholder of the Netherlands, a Protestant ally of the English, against the martial ambitions of Philip of Spain. To safeguard William, Marlowe goes undercover in an acting company about to travel to William’s court. En route to the coast, the troupe stops at the house of the queen’s magus, John Dee, where a fatal poisoning temporarily distracts Marlowe from sizing up the best way to keep his charge secure. Trow keeps the action moving briskly, but does so at the cost of plot complexity and layers of detail. (May)