Shakespearean Murder Mystery

2 total works

Alms for Oblivion

by Philip Gooden

Published 15 April 2003

'Another clever criminal plunge into history' Guardian

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...

The fourth historical murder mystery in the Nick Revill series, set in the bustling theatrical world of William Shakespeare.

Praise for Philip Gooden:

'Highly entertaining' Sunday Times

'The witty narrative, laced with puns and word play so popular in this period, makes this an enjoyable racy tale' Sunday Telegraph

'The book has much in common with the film Shakespeare in Love - full of colourful characters . . . but the book has an underlying darkness' Crime Time

'Historical mystery fans are in for a treat' Publishers Weekly

The Pale Companion

by Philip Gooden

Published 13 June 2002

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...