Tamburlaine Must Die - Hardcover

Welsh, Louise

3.39

784 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1841956252 ISBN 13: 9781841956251

Publisher: Canongate U.S., 2005

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A thrilling Elizabethan murder mystery starring Christopher Marlowe, a man with seventy-two hours to live, by the author of the sleeper hit The Cutting Room

Louise Welsh’s riveting, provocative debut novel of psychological suspense, The Cutting Room, was a tremendous international success, translated into sixteen languages, and The Guardian selected it as one of the five best debut novels of 2002. The New York Times Book Review called it, simply, a “knockout debut.” Her much anticipated follow-up is now upon us.

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.

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 when his idyll is cut short. A messenger from the queen and the nefarious Privy Council summons his immediate return to London. And in the following three days Marlowe confronts dangerous government factions, double agents, necromancy, betrayal, and revenge in his search for the murderous Tamburlaine, a killer who has escaped from between the pages of Marlowe’s most violent play. Tamburlaine is scandalizing London, mocking its leaders and institutions, and fomenting unrest. Marlowe, desperate and perplexed by who could be using his own character as a mouthpiece to destroy him, must confront his creation, or die.

Tamburlaine Must Die is the gripping, seventy-two hour adventure story of a man who dared to defy both God and his queen—and discovers that there are worse fates than damnation.

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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.

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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