A.D. Swanston brings us the latest Elizabethan spy caper to hit the shelves in recent years.
Incendium centres on the young (and, we are oft told, tall) lawyer Christopher Radcliff and his battles against both a Catholic plot to kill Elizabeth I and the petty intrigues of the monarch’s court.
Fans of S.J. Parris’ Giordano Bruno novels will find much comfort in Incendium’s plot and Radcliff, an erudite outsider with an unusual past, who turns state spy.
The first in a planned series by Waterstones executive turned writer, Swanston, is a colourful and gripping read in which you can almost smell the filthy Tudor River Thames.
But it also features one of the most signposted literary baddies I have read in some time.
