Monday, February 25, 2019

The Scorpion's Nest

Walshingham is cleaning up threats to the queen.  Fourteen men have gone to the scaffold, but one has eluded him.  He wants Kit Marlowe to go after the fifteenth.  It would mean travelling to France.

Marlowe goes under cover at the English College in Rheims, a place known as a nest of scorpions.  There he learns that a young man had recently died, but the manner of his death has been covered up.  Going into the catacombs he discovers the body of the victim and also discovers that he had been hung.  Marlowe also learns that one of the fathers had died recently, too.  A prostitute he has befriended tells him that in this case the victim had been stabbed to death in his bed.  How does she know that?  Her friend had been sleeping with him at the time.

Through Walshingham’s local agent, Marlowe has to go in search of a document that is in code.  Once he has it, Walshingham’s man who deciphers it will be there to do just that.  However, not long after his arrival, he is stabbed, and another man has been killed at the English College.

Time is running out for Marlowe to catch the man he has been sent to get.  Is he also the murderer?  How can he find the killer and complete Walshingham’s task in time?

Author M. J. Trow has some action remaining for Marlowe in this Elizabethan thriller before he can solve the murders and get back to London.  All-in-all, a good quick read.

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