The White Rose Murders - Hardcover

Clynes, Michael

3.98

762 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312089201 ISBN 13: 9780312089207

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1993

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A bizarre series of murders inside the court of Henry VIII is the center of this dramatic and colorful mystery in the tradition of Ellis Peters.
In 1517 the English armies have defeated and killed James IV of Scotland at Flodden, and James's widow queen. Margaret, sister to Henry VIII, has fled to England, leaving her children behind and her crown under a Council of Regency. Sir Roger Shallot, a bon vivant with the sharpest wits and fastest legs in Christendom, and his friend Benjamin Daunbey, nephew to Cardinal Wolsey, are ordered to restore her to her throne. They encounter a murder conspiracy and bloody intrigue on every side.
Dr. Selkirk, a half-mad physician imprisoned in the Tower, has information they need, but he is found poisoned in a locked chamber, guarded by soldiers, the only clue a poem of riddles. Other gruesome murders soon follow: at a haunted manor house in England; in the dark recesses of the Tower. The assassin is unknown, but always leaves a white rose - the mark of Les Blancs Sangliers, the secret society that plots the overthrow of the Tudor Monarchy.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

A third historical series from the author who, as P.C. Doherty, created scholar-rogue Matthew Janklyn and the clerk-spy Hugh Corbett now introduces Sir Roger Shallot, in his dotage and recounting his past exploits--some wily, others lecherous, most dishonest. Here, Shallot and his old school-chum/protector Ben are asked to interrogate Selkirk, now imprisoned in the Tower, and discover information vital to the return of Queen Margaret to Scotland. But Selkirk is soon murdered in his locked-from-the- inside cell (with a white rose mysteriously appearing by his side), and three more will die before Shallot--assassins dogging him both in England and in France as he learns of various treacheries, conspiracies, marital infidelities--can untangle the English, French, and Scottish line of successions. Shallot's bluster (he claims to have bedded Elizabeth I, offered plot ideas to Shakespeare, etc.) seems more force-fed ``history'' than genuine characterization, and these asides, always cut short by ``that's another story,'' become extremely irritating. Atogether, then, Shallot is far less interesting than that scamp Janklyn and medieval mole Corbett. -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

This lusty, rousing series launch, set in Britain during the mid-16th-century reign of Henry VIII, introduces Sir Roger Shallot--liar, thief and likely model for his playwright friend Shakespeare's Falstaff. Robust and unrepentant at age 90, dictating his memoirs to a shocked chaplain, Shallot tells a tale of royal intrigue, conspiracy and treachery that includes four murders, two of the locked-room variety. He and Benjamin Daubney, a boyhood friend who recruits him as secretary and servant, are tapped by Daubney's sinister uncle, Cardinal Wolsey, to help Margaret Tudor regain the Scottish throne, lost after the supposed death of her husband, James IV, at the battle of Flodden in 1513. James VI's half-mad physician, Alexander Selkirk, who knows crucial information, is found poisoned in his locked cell in the Tower of London, a white rose left on his desk. Daubney finally solves this first in a string of murders after observing the habits of monks in a scriptorium. Clynes, aka Paul Doherty ( The Masked Man ), delights with the disgraceful memoirs of this hero, who sports with abbesses and casts serious doubt on the virginity of Elizabeth.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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