Book description
Though the lusty star of Lord Westfield's Men, Laurence Firethorn, is
always ripe for seducing women bewitched by his art, the vicious rivalry
that disrupts the acting troupe erupts between two other players. Owen
Elias is a surly, envious Welshman, while Sebastian Carrick is an
amiable and attractive gentleman. Their onstage duels become ever more
realistic, but it is an axe that splits open Sebastian's head one night
in a Clerkenwell alley. Company book holder Nicholas Bracewell,
accustomed to damage control, begins to investigate the victim's death
and learns that in life, he was prone to make enemies from his weakness
for women and his willingness to welch on debts. A web of deception has
in fact been spun that stretches from lowly to high ranking courtesans,
all the way to the Virgin Queen. And what of the horse Nimbus, promised
to perform Pegasus-like at the very top of St. Paul's Church? "In
this riotous fifth novel...the tragedies being performed onstage pale in
comparison to all the blood and thunder offstage." EDWARD MARSTON
was born and brought up in South Wales. A full-time writer for over
thirty years, he has worked in radio, film, television and the theatre.
Prolific and highly successful, he is equally at home writing children
books or literary criticism, plays or biographies and the settings for
his crime novels range from the world of professional golf to the
compilation of the Domesday Survey. He is also a former Chairman of the
Crime Writers Association.
