The White Rose Murders
This lusty, rousing series launch, set in Britain during the mid-16th-century reign of Henry VIII, introduces Sir Roger Shallot--liar, thief and likely model for his playwright friend Shakespeare's Falstaff. Robust and unrepentant at age 90, dictating his memoirs to a shocked chaplain, Shallot tells a tale of royal intrigue, conspiracy and treachery that includes four murders, two of the locked-room variety. He and Benjamin Daubney, a boyhood friend who recruits him as secretary and servant, are tapped by Daubney's sinister uncle, Cardinal Wolsey, to help Margaret Tudor regain the Scottish throne, lost after the supposed death of her husband, James IV, at the battle of Flodden in 1513. James VI's half-mad physician, Alexander Selkirk, who knows crucial information, is found poisoned in his locked cell in the Tower of London, a white rose left on his desk. Daubney finally solves this first in a string of murders after observing the habits of monks in a scriptorium. Clynes, aka Paul Doherty ( The Masked Man ), delights with the disgraceful memoirs of this hero, who sports with abbesses and casts serious doubt on the virginity of Elizabeth.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.