March 11, 2013
Early in Trow’s workmanlike fourth Elizabethan whodunit featuring Christopher “Kit” Marlowe (after 2012’s Witch Hammer), Sir Frances Walsingham, the queen’s spymaster, presides over the execution of Anthony Babbington, a Catholic gentleman accused of conspiring against the monarch, who’s first hanged until nearly dead, then cut down from the scaffold and dispatched with a billhook. In an effort to root out all of Babbington’s colleagues, Walsingham, who’s obsessed with unearthing threats to the realm, sends Marlowe, his lead intelligencer and future playwright, to Rheims, France—the site of the English College, “the cradle of every Jesuit assassin” found in England in the last 15 years. But the inherent drama of the setup isn’t realized, despite the insertion of several murders for Marlowe to solve. An unexpected distraction is Trow’s inordinate fondness for referring to the college as a nest of scorpions—one reference to the significance of the title would more than suffice, but five is not only excessive but also heavy-handed.