Traitor’s Legacy by S.J. ParrisMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Its December 1598, Queen Elizabeth I is still on the throne, but ageing, with no heir.
Sophia De Wolfe is a widow and former spy. When she retired her former spy-master, Walsingham, brokered a marriage for her with the wealthy merchant Humphrey de Wolfe and they were very happy until his death. When she was nineteen Sophia fell in love with a Jesuit priest and bore a child out of wedlock who was subsequently adopted, she has used her connections to discover the identity of the child, who is now a young man of fifteen and has kept an eye on him ever since. Her son, Tobie, who has no idea she is his birth mother, is an actor in a theatre company and she supports the company with her patronage.
One night, a young woman's body is found in a shallow grave. She is no pauper, instead she is an incredibly wealthy young woman, Agnes, ward to Sir Thomas North, who was intended to be betrothed to Thomas's son Edmund. Pinned to the girl's body is a note in a code created especially for Sophia when she was a spy. She hasn't thought of the code for a decade - who could have got hold of it and why would they use it to write a note and pin it to a body? Has someone discovered Sophia's past? Robert Cecil, the queen's current spymaster instructs Sophia to investigate.
Then disaster strikes. Sir Thomas has found love letters from Tobie to Agnes and has decided that Tobie killed her when she refused to elope with him. Now Sophia will do anything to rescue her son from prison. But as she investigates things become murky, was her death connected to a secret Catholic conspiracy? Why did the Countess of Essex take such an interest in Agnes? Is her murder related to the uprisings in Ireland? Was her murder a direct hit to Sophia?
I requested this book thinking the author was C.J. Sansom or Andrew Taylor (many of whose books I have read and enjoyed) and honestly I was none the wiser at the end that it wasn't one of these authors - I will definitely revisit her Giordano Bruno series - I think I bought the first one and couldn't get into it.
Overall, a fascinating, well-plotted historical detective series and I will definitely request the second book in the series.
I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
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