Product Description

Following on the heels of her provocative and heavily lauded debut novel of psychological suspense, The Cutting Room, Louise Welsh's much-anticipated follow up delivers another stunning thriller. It's 1593 and London is a city on edge. Under threat from plague and war, it's a desperate place where strangers are unwelcome and severed heads grin from spikes on Tower Bridge. Paranoia and fear grip this great city's streets. Playwright, poet, spy, and man of prodigious appetites, Christopher Marlowe is working on his latest literary effort and enjoying the English countryside at his patron's estate. But this idyll is soon cut short by a message from the Queen. He must return immediately to London, for a killer has escaped from between the pages of Marlowe's most violent play and is scandalizing the city. In the ensuing three days, Marlowe confronts dangerous government factions, double agents, necromancy, betrayal, and revenge in his search for the murderous Tamburlaine. Tamburlaine Must Die is the suspenseful adventure story of a man who dares to defy both God and his Queen—and discovers that there are worse fates than damnation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #664256 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Christopher Marlowe, "playwright, scenester, and celebrated wit," was a superstar in Elizabethan London. Unfortunately for him, Elizabethan London was a risky place to attract notice. In Welsh's slim, taut follow-up to her 2003 debut, The Cutting Room, she reimagines the bitter end of the great dramatist's life, retold in his own words on the eve of his still-unsolved murder. The beginning of the end comes in the form of a messenger from the queen's Privy Council, summoning him back to the city from a comfortable ensconcement at his patron's country house. Turns out that heretical verses signed by Tamburlaine, his most famous (and famously ruthless) creation, have been turning up all over plague-decimated London in his absence. Faced with charges of heresy and blasphemy, Marlowe has an unspecified, "but clearly short," window of opportunity to offer up a more appealing scapegoat in his place. Welsh doesn't waste a word on any of the florid romanticizing so common in historical fiction: no heaving, corseted breasts or speeding steeds here. Just a hard, sharp little rapier of a thriller/mystery that packs a punishing schedule of sex, violence, wheeling and double-dealing into its brief length. The tension is unabated throughout this frantic, 72-hour dash among backstabbers, spies, murderers and prostitutes—even as Marlowe realizes that not even he will be able to talk his way out of this one. (Feb.)
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Review
"As quick and dark as a child’s nightmare. . . . Fictionalizes Marlowe’s last days with novelistic wit and interpretive imagination." -- Daniel Swift, The Nation

"If Raymond Chandler had written an Elizabethan thriller, it might have looked like this." -- Richard Ring, Providence Journal

"The Bard would have loved this period romp." -- Martin Zimmerman, San Diego Union-Tribune

"Welsh is back with a svelte . . . novel. . . . It’s tightly written, well plotted and, best of all, fun." -- Ron Bernas, Detroit Free Press

"Welsh’s vivid portrait of the beautiful, passionate, ever-witty Marlowe is the centerpiece. . . . A phantasmagoric Elizabethan thriller." -- Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

About the Author
Louise Welsh has published many short stories and articles. The Cutting Room, her first novel, was translated into twelve languages and has been optioned for a feature film. Welsh was chosen as one of Britain's Best First Novelists of 2002 by The Guardian (UK). The Cutting Room won the Crime Writers Association John Creasey Dagger for the best first crime novel (2002), the Saltire First Book of the Year Award (2002), and BBC's Underground 2003 Writer's Award.

Customer Reviews

A Taut Tale of the Mysterious Death of Christopher Marlowe
"The dead are equal." "The dead are dead."

Louise Welsh knows how to distill a potion of historical mystery into a novella of such power that it compels the reader to read this treat in one sitting. Unlike many authors who fictionalize history as the basis for novels, Welsh merely takes an isolated idea and expands on it like a theme and variations, all the while creating an atmosphere so vivid that he reader is utterly transported to the time, the place, and the consequences of her story.

Based on the fact that the death of playwright Christopher Marlowe has never been explained, Welsh focuses on a theory based on a character created by Marlowe - one Tamburlaine, a man of scandal and impetuous actions who was Marlowe's most evil concoction - explains the bizarre facts behind the mystery.

Set in 1593 when the Plague was eating London alive, Christopher Marlowe is summoned form the bed of his wealthy patron Thomas Walsingham to the Privy Council of the Queen where he is questioned about acts of heresy (in actuality a witch hunt to explain the dire etiology of the Plague!). Notes have been left throughout the city of London in the name of Tamburlaine and Marlowe has 72 hours to discover the plot behind the lies that implicate him as a traitor against the kingdom.

Populated with fellow actors (especially Blaize, a former lover and popular actor on the stages of London), writers, booksellers, and even figures such as Sir Walter Raleigh, this romp through the filth and pestilence that Welsh so well paints as London is as tense as any thriller, as illuminating as any psychological study, and as entertaining as history can be in the hands of a great novelist. She is an accomplished wordsmith and as creative a writer as any writing today. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, February 2005

interesting concept, poorly executed
"The secret life of Kit Marlow" is an interesting concept: intrigue, sex. violence, betrayal, poetry. However, the book is pulpy, tedious and unsatisfying.

Excellent
I thought this book was fantastic. It grips the reader, and leads them on an evocative journey through London, and closer to Marlowe's death. The story is built around historical facts, but in avoiding going up to Marlowe's death, Welsh avoids having to deal with the various theories and contradictory pieces of evidence surrounding Marlowe's murder. As for the man himself, in the book he is a witty, likeable man, and the reader connects to him, and feels for him, making his outcome even more tragic. Fantastic