The Gallows Murders - Softcover

Clynes, Michael

4.26

320 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747249288 ISBN 13: 9780747249283

Publisher: Headline Book Publishing Ltd., 1996

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In the summer of 1523, the hot weather and the sweating sickness provide a fertile breeding ground for terrible murders and the most treasonable conspiracies. King Henry VIII has moved the court to Windsor where he slakes his lusts whilst the kingdom is governed by his first minister, Cardinal Wolsey. Someone is sending the King threatening letters from the Tower, under the name and seal of Edward, one of the princes supposedly murdered there, demanding that great amounts of gold be left in different parts of London. If the orders are not carried out, proclamations will be published throughout the capital which, coinciding with the outbreak of plague, may make it look as though the hand of God has turned against the Tudors for usurping the throne. Wolsey has only two people to turn to: his beloved nephew, Benjamin Daunbey, and Daunbey's faithful servant, Roger Shallot. Benjamin and Roger become embroiled in the murky Tudor underworld and the pressure to solve the mysteries mounts when King Henry threatens that Roger Shallot's life depends on it.

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About the Author:

Paul Doherty was born in Middlesbrough. He studied History at Liverpool and Oxford Universities and obtained a doctorate for his thesis on Edward II and Queen Isabella. He is now headmaster of a school in north-east London and lives with his family in Essex.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Somebody must have been massaging blowhard Sir Roger Shallot's bloated ego; he no longer feels the need to run his mouth quite so incessantly about the phrases he fed his old mate Will Shakespeare and his dalliance with good Queen Bess. The break gives him more energy to devote to his fifth memoir, which begins when he's rescued from duty as an impromptu pallbearer for victims of London's 1523 sweating sickness and dispatched with his master, Cardinal Wolsey's gentle nephew Benjamin Daunbey (A Brood of Vipers, 1996, etc.), to the Tower of London to figure out who's making merry by dispatching the seven members of the Guild of Hangmen and sending King Henry VIII blustering blackmail letters signed Edward V--the older of the princes in the Tower allegedly murdered by Richard III some 40 years before. The letters are a fraud, of course (aren't they?), but given the scary track record of recent pretenders to the throne, the threat to the peace of Henry's kingdom is real enough, and His Majesty is determined to find out who's masquerading as the rightful king to demand tributes in gold and murdering the very executioners who are most likely to know just what did and didn't happen in the Tower back in 1485. What begins as a pretty puzzle--how did someone get into the sealed Tower garrison for all that mischief?--tails off into a workaday mystery. But as a series of gorgeous, outrageous adventures, this installment ranks with Shallot's best. -- Copyright �1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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