Nick is an appealing character, I adored the detailed setting, and the mystery's resolution makes sense without seeming too easy. I'm eagerly awaiting the third book in the series.
I hoped this was going to be the perfect cozy book for reading over a long weekend: an Elizabethan mystery, complete with fantastic details of the dress, food, street life, and royal court tensions of the time; intrigue, plotting, and the lurking threat of Mary Queen of Scots; and the rewards and dangers of being in Elizabeth I's inner circle. And, dear reader, it was.
With fears of betrayal and destruction at the hands of Mary Queen of Scots loyalists looming over Elizabeth's court, Nicholas Holt, a spy for Sir Francis Walsingham, must unravel the mystery of a killer who's picking off his fellow spies one by one.
But first Queen Elizabeth orders Nick to work within a rival spy network, and he suspects that some of the trusted sneaks are double agents aiming for Elizabeth's destruction. When Nick realizes that some of his closest friends, innocent of any wrongdoing, are in potential mortal danger because of his position as a spy, he's forced to take risks to try to out the murderer immediately, without concern for politics, protocol, or his own personal safety.
Nick is an appealing character, I adored the detailed setting, and the mystery's resolution makes sense without seeming too easy or involving outlandish red herrings.
Any Bossy thoughts on this book?
I mentioned this book (along with The Unhoneymooners and Scrappy Little Nobody) in the post Three Books I'm Reading Now, 11/17/20 Edition.
This is the second in Wolfe's Elizabethan Spy Mystery series; the first was A Murder by Any Name. The Course of All Treasons was published last spring, and I can't wait for the third installment.
If you like mysteries and historical fiction like I do, you might also like some of the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Historical Fiction Mysteries to Intrigue You.