'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune

In the sixteenth century lived two queens about whom much has been written: Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart. However, there are more than just two countries in the British Isles and there is a third monarch, of whom there are no tales. This is his story.

All major characters in this novel bar two were real people. If chronology has not always been followed too strictly, it is because all this is long ago and far away and does not matter now. This is only a story for reading, but it is a true story.