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.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


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


Daniel Swift, The Nation
"As quick and dark as a child’s nightmare. . . . Fictionalizes Marlowe’s last days with novelistic wit and interpretive imagination."


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


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


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


Book 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.


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 THE PUBLISHER

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 when his idyll is cut short. A messenger from the queen and the nefarious Privy Council demands 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 escaped from 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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Charles Taylor - The New York Times

The most pleasurable thing here is Welsh's depiction of Marlowe. He's presented not as a distant figure but as an ambisexual dynamo, at least as interested in the life of the body as in the life of the mind. As she showed in The Cutting Room, Welsh has a talent for depicting grungy sexual situations without rubbing the reader's nose in degradation; there is no uneasy sense that either here, or in the violent scenes, she's going overboard or using what she's showing us for cheap thrills. When Marlowe turns on his betrayer in the midst of a performance, the beating he metes out is brutal. Welsh handles the scene deftly, letting us feel Marlowe high on his own savagery but never slipping into that sadism herself.

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.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Claiming to be hurriedly penned by Christopher Marlowe on the eve of his own mysterious murder, this Elizabethan thriller describes the great English playwright's descent toward death in London. As the story unfolds, Marlowe is betrayed to the all-powerful Privy Council, both by his own blasphemous words and by a nefarious agent masquerading as his heroic character Tamburlaine. In the few days of freedom that the Council has granted him, Marlowe hunts for his nemesis, accompanied by his only friend, a debauched actor named Blaize. During his search, Marlowe encounters a sadistic gaoler in an alley beside Newgate prison, a treacherous but erudite spy in a seedy pub, and a frightened whore whom he straddles while Blaize looks on. Welsh captures the underbelly of 1690s London with touches of frightening realism. In the company of unsavory characters, Marlowe is portrayed as a violent and drunken protagonist whose degeneracy overwhelms his genius. Unfortunately, the narrative fails to convey adequately the sense of trepidation and urgency that one would expect from such a desperate man, while the language seldom reflects the literary talent of its alleged author. The preponderance of description over action, a thin plot, and a predictable denouement also detract from the novella's suspense. Recommended for larger fiction collections and for those readers who enjoyed Welsh's more successful first mystery, The Cutting Room.-Joseph M. Eagan, Enoch Pratt Free Lib., Baltimore Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The last feverish week in the life of Christopher Marlowe, dramatist, informant and spy. Fresh from the bed of his patron, Lord Thomas Walsingham, the storied playwright is summoned before the Queen's Privy Council and charged with heresy, atheism and libel. There's nothing unusual about the first two charges. Marlowe's old friend Thomas Kyd, caught with a heretical pamphlet, has sought to save himself by claiming that he copied it for his former housemate, and the atheism of Marlowe's play Tamburlaine is a canard throughout London. It's the libel charge that's most menacing. Someone calling himself Tamburlaine has posted threatening verses on the door of a Dutch church, and although Marlowe points out that "if I were to write a libel I would not make it so illiterate," his accusers are unimpressed because, in the severe political economy of 1593, somebody has to take the blame. Indeed, Wells (The Cutting Room, 2003) presents her dark Elizabethan gallery of rogues and poets, who turn desperately on one another to save themselves from death and worse torments, as mirrors of today. "We live in desperate times, where loyalty is all," observes Marlowe as he embarks on his quest to unmask the blustering Tamburlaine before his own life is forfeit. As the clock ticks down, Marlowe confronts his oldest friend Thomas Blaize, a player with literary aspirations; an old bookseller, Blind Grizzle; an unnamed power who offers to protect him from the charges if he will inform against Sir Walter Raleigh; and an emissary from Raleigh himself, who points out the mortal risk of accusing the Queen's sometime favorite. Despite the catchy title, the thin plot will disappoint readers looking for the genericpleasures of the historical mystery. What they'll find instead is a pitiless rendering of an Elizabethan celebrity culture in which each celebrity survives by unceasingly attacking all the others. Agent: David Miller/Rogers, Coleridge & White

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