Shadow Of Poison

By: Peter Tonkin

September 1586
Fresh from unmasking Anthony Babington’s plot to murder Queen Elizabeth, replace her with the Queen of Scots and open England to a Catholic invasion, Queen’s Intelligencer Robert Poley goes undercover disguised as a notorious poisoner.

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Book Description

September 1586

Fresh from unmasking Anthony Babington’s plot to murder Queen Elizabeth, replace her with the Queen of Scots and open England to a Catholic invasion, Queen’s Intelligencer Robert Poley goes undercover disguised as a notorious poisoner.

Poley must insert himself into a world of Portuguese and Spanish agents, renegade Irish soldiers and Jewish couriers, to counter King Philip’s relentless plans to poison the Queen and those closest to her..

The English spy must not only outwit enemies abroad, however.

The Queen's Intelligencer is drawn into the sphere of the temperamental Earl of Essex who, after costly and humiliating disasters on the battlefield, is desperate to rebuild his standing at court with a major intelligence coup.

Poley’s suspects are numerous and powerful: Dom Antonio, dethroned king of Portugal; Count Fuentes, King Philip’s spymaster in Brussels; Sir William Stanley, turncoat Irish General in the Low Countries - and, in London, Jewish doctor Roderigo Lopez, Her Majesty’s apparently faithful personal physician, whom the jealous Essex is determined to prove is an enemy of the crown.

The mission unfolds, not without its victims from the social heights of the Earl of Essex’s father and the Earl of Derby. to the lowliest servant watching Catholic households for Robert Cecil’s spy network.

Poley finds himself caught between duty and conscience as it becomes ever more difficult to tell friend from foe.

Then, as the action moves from Europe back to England while Spanish, Portuguese and Irish assassins creep into London, smuggling their poisons with them, Poley is forced to gamble his reputation, his life and even the life of the Queen on his waning faith in Dr Lopez’s innocence.

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