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aphonusbalonus's review against another edition
4.0
What a goofy guy doing goofy things! I sure hope he doesn’t get stabbed or anything haha
likecymbeline's review against another edition
4.0
Marlowe is an author I've dedicated a lot of attention to and who has weirdly meant a lot to me since I was fifteen or so, which I can't entirely explain to others. This is a book I've known about for ages. I remember in my first English class at university the professor spoke about this book when filling us in on Marlowe's biography, and I meant to read it then. I meant to read it at so many different times in the intervening years, and this very website repeatedly recommended it as a book aligned with my interests.
Given my interest in Marlowe and my tendency to engage with any piece of information about him that comes my way, very little in the first part of this book was new to me. Yet I liked that. It was like going back to a comforting re-read, except with the novelty of reading something for the first time. I knew all the players, I knew the scene, I knew the long day at Eleanor Bull's and the suspicious connections of all those involved. I still thrilled at every revelation that I knew was coming, and, by god, I could not stop talking about it to anyone too polite to ask me to shut it. As I progressed through the book it drew out more about the 'secret theatre' of Elizabethan intelligence work, with all its peculiar double-dealing characters. Nicholl makes quite liberal connections and suppositions at times, but also acknowledges this and notes that we only have documents to work with, and can seldom know the motives or reception of those documents.
Part of what made this book familiar is the love I bore for Anthony Burgess' [b:A Dead Man in Deptford|1178850|A Dead Man in Deptford|Anthony Burgess|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1223630439s/1178850.jpg|938405], which I found in a used bookstore when I was sixteen on a trip to The City and which was one of my favourites for quite some time. It's probably been ten years since I last read it, but now I'm deeply inclined to revisit it and determine what debt it owes to this work of Nicholl's.
Given my interest in Marlowe and my tendency to engage with any piece of information about him that comes my way, very little in the first part of this book was new to me. Yet I liked that. It was like going back to a comforting re-read, except with the novelty of reading something for the first time. I knew all the players, I knew the scene, I knew the long day at Eleanor Bull's and the suspicious connections of all those involved. I still thrilled at every revelation that I knew was coming, and, by god, I could not stop talking about it to anyone too polite to ask me to shut it. As I progressed through the book it drew out more about the 'secret theatre' of Elizabethan intelligence work, with all its peculiar double-dealing characters. Nicholl makes quite liberal connections and suppositions at times, but also acknowledges this and notes that we only have documents to work with, and can seldom know the motives or reception of those documents.
Part of what made this book familiar is the love I bore for Anthony Burgess' [b:A Dead Man in Deptford|1178850|A Dead Man in Deptford|Anthony Burgess|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1223630439s/1178850.jpg|938405], which I found in a used bookstore when I was sixteen on a trip to The City and which was one of my favourites for quite some time. It's probably been ten years since I last read it, but now I'm deeply inclined to revisit it and determine what debt it owes to this work of Nicholl's.
pythonesque's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
I love this book, after all these years of re-reading — always.
Marlowe is the darling of my heart. I like people who like him too, and this law thriller is written by another fan.
Sometimes it was painful to read about political twists like the Babington plot. Some people are just plain bad and they have a lot of power over others.
But other times... My favourite moments in this thriller are those inscribed between lines author's little moments of fanboyish glee.
Marlowe is the darling of my heart. I like people who like him too, and this law thriller is written by another fan.
Sometimes it was painful to read about political twists like the Babington plot. Some people are just plain bad and they have a lot of power over others.
But other times... My favourite moments in this thriller are those inscribed between lines author's little moments of fanboyish glee.
... And if I had to guess, or stick a pin into the map of Flushing drawn up by Robert Adams in 1585, it might perhaps point me to a certain little garage-like 'café' hard by the church, filled with loud music and the smell of hashish, where a lounging leather-jacketed group in the corner seemed for a moment — to a pair of archive-weary eyes unused to the darkness — like young men wearing doublets.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder and Deportation
lyris51101's review against another edition
5.0
One of my all-time favorites. This is a book full of rich, historical content that also manages to be a gripping page turner of a mystery.
xsnerg's review
3.0
This book was described as a medieval thriller focusing on the murder of Christopher Marlowe, but it reads like a medieval police procedural devote of excitement. More of a scholarly work than a factual thriller.
skolastic's review
2.0
Reading this at the same time as The Power Broker does Nicholl no favors. The explanation/epxloration of the Elizabethan spy world is meandering and boring, with scads of side stories that just seem pointless by the end. Not something I can really recommend.
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