In Black Death, playwright Christopher “Kit” Marlowe investigates the death of Robert Greene, a former Cambridge scholar. Marlowe didn’t particularly like Greene, but shortly before Green died, he sent Marlowe a desperate letter, pleading for his help and saying that someone was trying to kill him.
Title: Black Death
Author: MJ Trow
Series: Kit Marlowe #10
First Published: July 1, 2019
Publisher: Severn House
Categories: Historical Fiction, Mystery
Acquired: from the publisher via NetGalley
*** Thank you to publisher, Severn House, for providing me with a advanced e-copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. ***
An intriguing historical mystery with real-life character Christopher “Kit” Marlowe
As a fan of Tudor-era historical fiction, it’s always nice to find a book that has a different angle because, let’s face it, after a while, there’s only so much authors can do to fictionalize real-life historical characters.
Although Kit Marlowe has popped up in several of the books I’ve read before, he has never been a central character, so discovering Black Death on NetGalley was a nice surprise.
There’s a lot going on in this murder mystery story – an unpopular poet (Greene) is murdered, the stage manager of the Rose Theatre goes missing, the plague is ravaging London, a sham “doctor” is taking advantage of the people’s fear of the plague, the former nursemaid of the powerful Cecil family is found murdered in the Cecil’s home and the London theatres have been closed on account of plague. Whew!
Although this is Book 10 in the series, it reads perfectly fine as a standalone. I found it interesting that Marlowe is investigating the murder of a man who he couldn’t stand when he was alive. It adds to both Marlowe’s complicated nature, but also makes the suspect list quite long and varied.
A great introduction to the Kit Marlowe series
This was my first read in the Kit Marlowe series, but it will certainly not be my last. Trow’s writing is incredibly descriptive, but not in a way that bogs down the story. As I mentioned before, there is A LOT going on here, but at no point did I feel that things were too complicated or too rushed.
Even though I read a lot of Tudor-era historical fiction, there were a lot of aspects to this story that were a nice change to the usual Queens and Kings storylines. There is a heavy focus on theatre life (not a big surprise, considering Marlowe is a playwright), an interesting look at life in Bedlam and a focus on the fear and paranoia that gripped London during the plague season.
Instead of the glamour and glitz of court life, this book focuses a lot more on the “real world” – the gritty, hard and dirty life of the common people in Elizabethan England.
I particularly enjoyed Kit Marlowe as a fictional character. He is well-written by Trow and is a bit of a chameleon – he can be friendly, charming, sly, dangerous and tender at any given moment. From what I’ve read about Marlowe’s real-life exploits, perhaps Trow isn’t that far off. Apparently, Marlowe allegedly more than just a playwright. He was remembered as a drinker, a brawler, and rumoured to be a spy who died under mysterious circumstances.
I’m definitely intrigued by Marlowe as a character and am looking forward to going back and reading the first nine books in this series.
Read Black Death for yourself
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