September 28, 2015
The unsolved disappearance of royal painter Hans Holbein in 1543 drives British author Wilson’s gripping Tudor historical, his first novel to be published in the U.S. When goldsmith Thomas Treviot, who’s awaiting some tableware designs from Holbein, sends a servant, Bart Miller, to look for the German artist at his London residence, Bart gets into a brawl and ends up accused of the murder of Holbein’s apprentice. Convinced that remaining in custody is tantamount to a death sentence, Bart flees captivity. Meanwhile, Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is under attack from rivals who seek to supplant his influence with Henry VIII. The archbishop reveals to Treviot that Holbein was working covertly for himself and Thomas Cromwell, the king’s trusted adviser, to identify the conspirators. This perilous assignment could be related to the artist’s vanishing. Wilson (Charlemagne) keeps the twists coming as he brings the past to vivid life. Fans of C.J. Sansom and Rory Clements will be pleased.
September 15, 2015
It's 1543. Henry VIII has divorced England from the Church of Rome, but his Privy Council remains a nest of vipers, a fearsome place for master goldsmith Thomas Treviot to meddle. Historian Wilson's U.S. fiction debut finds the "unbending oak," King Henry, rotten with illness. A papist conspiracy has led to the fall of the powerful reformer Thomas Cromwell, Lord Great Chamberlain. With that, "the fate of the English church lay entirely in the hands of Thomas Cranmer," Archbishop of Canterbury. Treviot is pulled into this "world of secrecy, subterfuge and violence" because he often completed commissions for Johannes Holbein, royal portraitist. Holbein was the reformer's window into court machinations. Now Holbein's disappeared. Is another papist plot brewing? Cranmer decides Treviot's friendship with Holbein makes him the man to find the missing artist. In a tale unfolding smoothly and believably, Wilson offers action and intrigue on every page, whether it's Treviot galloping across a plague-riven London or through a misty countryside ravaged by crop failure or finding himself embroiled in skirmishes among knaves wielding clubs, knives, and rapiers. Minor characters add charm: Morice, Cranmer's Machiavellian but good-hearted secretary; kind Ned Longbourne, apothecary and former monk; and bold, clever, and outspoken Lizzie, once brothel-bound, now married to Treviot's assistant. There are Tudor descriptions-"malapert rogue"-and invective-"shut your snout, hedge pig!"-damsels in distress, children kidnapped, heraldic confusions, and meals of "venison, carp, marchpane cake, and muscadel." Treviot confronts patronizing aristocrats, obstreperous petty officials, and the villains, one a fey anti-reformist aristocrat called the Popinjay and the other Black Harry, a cutthroat zealot who served the Spanish Inquisition. First-rate historical fiction.
COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.