K.J. Maitland
TWO years on from the treasonous Gunpowder Plot of 1605, one of the perpetrators is still at large and unrepentant Catholics are still ready to kill for their forbidden beliefs. There are rumours that this last Catholic conspirator might be hiding out, alongside priests and foreign spies smuggled in from abroad, with a recusant Catholic family at Battle Abbey in Sussex. One infiltrator has already been murdered in pursuit of the truth. Can the King’s most mysterious intelligencer succeed where he failed?
Karen Maitland (pictured below), much-loved author of a string of spooky medieval mysteries but writing here as K.J. Maitland, returns with her intriguing Crown spy Daniel Pursglove – a man with a past and an uncertain future – in the second book of a thrilling historical series set in the early years of the reign of James I. Steeped in the power play of a volatile period of English history – when the paranoid King James was still living in the shadow of the daring attempt to blow up Westminster – this exciting, authentic and superbly researched series brings us both page-turning mysteries and a fascinating exploration of the dark heart of Jacobean court politics.
In November of 1607, cannons are firing and crowds are
gathering in London to mark two years since the Gunpowder Plot despite the
bitter cold that they are calling the ‘wolf’s bite’ because it’s sinking its
teeth deep into the heart of the land.
Paranoia still reigns, there are ‘eyes and spies’ in every
street and resentment of the Scots is growing, an unease not helped by King
James’s new ‘favourite,’ a dashing young Scottish horseman called Robert Carr.
Across the city, in Rotherhithe, priest hunter and
pursuivant Daniel Pursglove, just one of the false names he has adopted during
his thirty years, is summoned by Charles FitzAlan, a close adviser to the King,
and ordered to infiltrate Battle Abbey and find proof of treachery. An earlier attempt to infiltrate by another spy, Master
Benet, failed when he was struck down in the grounds of the abbey, home to the Montague
family and a place which has caught the paranoid eye of the King because it is
close to the coast and the perfect place to hide newly-arrived spies and
priests.
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So far, Viscountess Montague has avoided being brought to justice because she has powerful protectors on the Privy Council who claim that she is just ‘a frail old woman of delicate breeding’ but it is rumoured she sits at the heart of the Catholic network. Some say that her household
disguises those loyal to the Pope as servants within the abbey walls and Daniel soon discovers that nearly everyone there has something to hide – and for deeds far more dangerous than religious dissent. But there is one lone, mysterious figure that Daniel senses only in the shadows and carefully concealed from the world. Could the missing, notorious Gunpowder Plot traitor Spero Pettingar finally be close at hand?And as more bodies are unearthed, Daniel is determined to
catch the culprit… but how do you unmask a killer when nobody is who they seem?
Suspicion, superstition and spine-tingling suspense abound in this atmospheric trip to a land where frosted air sucks heat from human limbs, bracken is encased in ice coffins, and iron-hard ground is a torture for frozen travellers. But danger comes from human nature as well as the natural world… many Catholics have not given up their fight against the new Protestant King whose constant fears of a religious plot have made him perilously unstable and paranoid.
In her trademark style, Maitland brings a past world to
vivid life with her richly detailed scene-setting and masterful storytelling,
enabling readers to feel the bone-chilling cold funnelling through the abbey’s
roof, smell the fires in the stone pits, and sense menace and death in the
frozen air. At the heart of this dark and addictive story are the
enigmatic Daniel – a man whose Catholic upbringing has rendered him constantly
under suspicion – and the intriguing Magdalen Montague whose unquenchable
spirit and survival skills caught the imagination of Maitland during her
research. Packed with real history, priests, puritans, peril, plot
twists, and an entertaining glossary of 16th century words and
phrases, Traitor in the Ice is a dark and dazzling addition to a cracking
series.
(Headline Review, hardback, £16.99)
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