The Latin inscription carved on the gleaming blade read “He who lives in falsehood slays his soul; he who lies, his honor.” If only they had known how true those words would prove to be. The Sword of Shame was lovingly crafted by a Saxon swordsmith shortly before the Norman invasion, and its cons...
ALMS FOR OBLIVION (Amateur Sleuth-London-1600s) – G+Gooden, Philip – 4th in seriesConstable, 2003- HardcoverNick Reville is a player in Burbage and Shakespeare's Chamberlain's Company. A friend from his home village, Peter Agate, comes to London and informs Nick that he, too, wants to be a playe...
I just finished reading “The Tainted Relic” by a conglomerate of writers known as the Medieval Murderers. This is in essence,five short novellas and a prologue detailing events pertained by cursed relic,a splinter of the true cross of stained with the blood of Christ kept safe by a religious orde...
Following the events recounted in Sleep of Death, Nick Revill, is now a junior member of the acting troupe The Chamberlain's Men and in February 1601 finds himself caught up in dangerous political intrigue. Queen Elizabeth is in her 68th year and with no child or appointed successor there is wide...
It is the summer of 1604, many years after the defeat of the Armada, and the Spanish are in London to negotiate a peace treaty. Nick Revill's theater company— newly promoted to the King's Men now that James I is on the throne—are given a ceremonial role at the celebrations. But not everybody welc...
History meets mystery with a new twist in this raucous, colorful debut novel set in the bustling theatrical world of Shakespeare and Marlowe during the reign of the formidable Elizabeth I. Fast-paced and sprightly, it takes Nick Revill, a young actor in the newly established Chamberlain's Men com...
Elizabeth I approaches the end of her illustrious reign, the plague is raging in London, and the Privy Council has ordered the theaters closed. Still, author Philip Gooden's fifth novel in the popular Shakespearean series brings us a great mystery as actor-sleuth Nick Revill and the Chamberlain's...
A band of workers were using saws and axes to cut up a fallen tree on the eastern bank of the river where it doubled back on the far side of the cathedral. Their overseer was alerted by the cries of a woman. With a couple of his companions, he followed the direction of the sounds. The three ran a...
The cemetery, which was half burial-ground, half parkland, was in Stoke Newington, itself half in London and half out of it, and was the preferred resting-place of many nonconformists. On a bright morning in October, less than a week after Mr Lye’s death and with weather to match the day when he ...
I would’ve said that it cast a shadow over the wedding preparations but there hadn’t been any great signs of joy to these beforehand, and they went forward without interruption. No, I mean that it made the servants’ hall a gossiping, troubled place from which all kinds of stories and rumours spre...
Then I found myself agreeing to the same proposal, uneasily. By the next morning I’d more or less forgotten the attack, despite the bruises and the pang in my side if I turned sharply. Instead I was preoccupied with the conversation we’d had in the Pure Waterman. I could not rid myself of the ide...
He’d had a restless night in the four-poster in The Side of Beef, with a dream of struggling to gather up scattered sheets of paper from a railway line that stretched across a bare plain. He was acutely aware that the longer his task took the more likely was a train to thunder down on him. He cou...
