D.K. Wilson is a popular author in Great Britain who is recognized for his knowledge of English history, seamlessly incorporated into his historical fiction. This, his first book to be published in the U.S., is actually the second book in a new series in which he seeks to create plausible explanations for famous unsolved crimes that occurred during the turbulent reign of Henry VIII.
His fictional crime-solving hero is Thomas Treviot, a prosperous young London goldsmith who sells many of his wares to the rich and powerful nobles who frequent the Tudor Court.
In the series debut, The First Horseman (2013), the true crime is the murder of Sir Robert Packington, a merchant and member of Parliament, who was shot and killed on his way to attend Mass in Cheapside one misty morning in November 1536. It was the first recorded assassination with a firearm in British history, and the murder was never solved. In the book, Thomas Treviot. a friend of Sir Robert's, seeks to bring his killer to justice.
The Traitor's Mark begins seven years later. Henry VIII is old and sick. After a wet summer the crops are rotting in the fields while London suffers another outbreak of the plague. Compounding the misery, religious plots and counter-plots entangle guilty and innocent alike as adherents of the Old Faith and the New Learning fight for the King's favor. Wilson combines two true "crimes" this time. In the Prebendaries Plot, disaffected clergy and nobles plotted to bring down Thomas Cranmer, Henry's Reformist Archbishop of Canterbury, and burn him alive as a heretic. And then there is the alleged death of Hans Holbein, the King's Painter, in the fall of 1543, as reported some sixty years later by another artis who mentions in passing that Holbein died of the plague, but offers no evidence. Did Holbein die? And if so, why? Or did he leave England? And if so, where did he go? For whatever reason, in 1543 Holbein vanishes from the historical record.
Wilson starts from these premises and spins a tale of intrigue, kidnapping and murder around them. While his story is fiction, it is set in real places and many of the characters we encounter are real people – Holbein, Cranmer, the Duke of Norfolk, Bishop Gardiner of Winchester, Dr. Thomas Legh, Sir Anthony Denny, to name but a few. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Wilson did his homework. The fictional elements blended smoothly with the historical elements, fast paced and with plenty of clues and false leads planted throughout.
Click HERE to read a review from Publishers Weekly.
Click HERE to read a review from Kirkus Reviews,
Click HERE to read a review from the Christian Science Monitor.
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