The Intelligencer

by Leslie Silbert

London, 1593: It is three weeks before the murder of Christopher Marlowe, playwright and spy in Queen Elizabeth I's secret service -- a crime that remains unsolved to this day. Marlowe is hoping to find his missing muse as he sets off on a new intelligence assignment...and closes in on the secret that will seal his fate. New York City, present day: Renaissance scholar turned private eye Kate Morgan investigates a shocking heist and murder involving a mysterious, antique manuscript recently unearthed in central London. What secret lurks in those yellowed, ciphered pages...and how, centuries later, could it drive someone to kill? Propelling us from the shadows of the sixteenth-century underworld to the chambers of a clandestine U.S. intelligence unit, from the glitter of the Elizabethan court to the catacombs of ancient Rome, The Intelligencer's dual narratives twist, turn, and collide as they race toward a stunning finale.

• ISBN10: 0743432932
• ISBN13: 9780743432931
• Publish Date: 18 July 2005 (first published 1 February 2004)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 11 June 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Edition: New edition
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[viking2917]

Having just returned from London, and seeing The Secret Agent (a play about Sir Francis Walsingham and Elizabeth I) at the Globe Theater complex, and having just finished reading The Queen's Agent (a bio of Walsingham), I was excited to revisit The Intelligencer, a novel of Christopher Marlowe, which I'd last read in 2005.

Marlowe was a contemporary of Walsingham as well as Shakespeare, and was in addition a spy for the Elizabethan crown, it's generally accepted that he was in Walsingham's pay. Although by the time of The Intelligencer, Walsingham is dead and Sir Robert Cecil, Lord Burghley, and his son, are mostly in charge of the Elizabethan spy apparatus.

The Intelligencer is a two-timeline mystery, pairing Marlowe's exploits and life with the adventures of Kate Morgan, a private investigator, who in fact works for a CIA front organization. The common thread is the discovery of a book containing Walsingham's most valuable secrets. In Marlowe's time, the hunt for the book is on. When a modern day researcher discovers the book, events are set in motion linking the two timelines.

The Intelligencer is good fun if you are at all interested in Elizabethan times, especially in regards the theater or the spy world or both. It's readily accessible, although having just read The Queen's Agent, a biography of Walsingham, I was well prepared for the historical side of it. Best of all, since I'd read it 12 years ago, I'd forgotten the ending and the bad guy for most of the book, so it was a good read the second time too!