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Third in the entertaining adventures of Shakespearean actor and sleuth, Nick Revill. It is midsummer in the year 1601. Nick Revill and his fellow actors of the company known as the Chamberlain's Men are journeying across the Wiltshire Downs for a country-house presentation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It should be a pleasant well-paid jaunt to celebrate a noble marriage, but instead the players find themselves in the midst of a tense family atmosphere, somehow linked to the presence of the household's sinister steward. Very soon Nick finds that the Dream has turned into a nightmare, where murder appears commonplace, and before too long he must fight to save his own life against the ancient backdrop of Stonehenge...

Elizabeth I is nearing the end of her reign with no direct heir and plots and rumours of rebellion abound. The Queen's former favourite, the Earl of Essex, appears to be eager to protect the throne, but some believe he intends to seize it.In the world of the theatre, the Chamberlain's Men are approached by a member of Essex's inner circle. He offers them money to put on a special performance of Shakespeare's Richard II - the treasonous drama of monarchy deposed and murdered. And player Nick Revill finds himself forced to act as a government spy and keep watch on his own company. But then the murders start...Praise for Philip Gooden:'Highly entertaining.' Sunday Times'Welcome to Elizabethan England where... Gooden will give you a gratifying taste of the danger and excitement of that lusty place and time.' Publishers Weekly

In the last decade of Elizabeth I's reign, Nick Revill, an aspiring young actor, comes to London seeking fame and fortune. Once there he gains employment with the Chamberlain's Men.Thrown out of his digs over an unfortunate accident, Nick is offered lodgings at a wealthy Thameside mansion by a black-clad youth whose father has just died and whose mother has remarried his uncle. Pondering on the similarities between the young man's story and William Shakespeare's newest tragedy, Hamlet, Nick is charged with the task of finding out whether foul play was involved in the death of the old man and hasty remarriage of his young, lusty wife.As Nick works his way ever closer to the truth, the finger of suspicion begins to point to his enigmatic employer Mr William Shakespeare - actor, author and shareholder in the Chamberlain's Men...

On a foggy morning in 1602, a boyhood friend of Nick Revill arrives in London. When Peter Agate announces that he wants to try his hand at acting, what can Nick do but offer him a part with his own company, the Chamberlain's Men, who are putting on a private production of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida for the lawyers of Middle Temple.Yet within days Peter Agate is dead, stabbed to death at Nick's lodgings - the beginning of a sequence of violent deaths, each somehow implicating Nick himself. To avoid the hangman's noose Nick must discover the real murderer among a cast of suspects, including an aristocratic brother and sister, a troublemaker from a rival company and an ex-actor who once saw the Devil himself on stage...

When the Black Death strikes London, all the theatres are closed down by order of the Privy Council. The Chamberlain's Men, the theatre company Nick Revill is part of, takes up an invitation to play in Oxford. However, it seems that the plague has followed them - but not all deaths are as they seem.

It's the summer of 1604 and the Spanish are in London. Many years after the ill-fated Armada, they are negotiating a peace treaty with the English. Nick Revill's acting company is given a ceremonial role at the celebrations. But not everybody welcomes this outbreak of peace. In the shifting world of the court there are factions. In the Tower of London sits that implacable enemy of the Spanish, Sir Walter Raleigh, and he has friends on the outside who may try to sabotage the negotiations. Nick, meanwhile, is trying to get on with his playing. Invited by Shakespeare's rival, Ben Jonson, to take part in a masque at Somerset House where the Spanish are lodged, Nick is caught up in a conspiracy. During a rehearsal the courtier Sir Philip Blake dies an apparently accidental death when he tumbles from a 'Deus ex machina' chair which is lowering him to the stage. But this is only the first of a series of suspicious deaths, and Nick must look for the murderer among those around him. And Nick has other distractions besides. There is his growing attraction to his landlady, the widowed Ursula Buckle. And then there is that new French girl at the Mitre brothel...