I won this ARC through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Looking forward to reading it.

Registered in Centreville, Virginia, USA.

Giordano Bruno is an excommunicated monk on the run from the Inquisition for reading subversive literature. A few years later he ends up in Queen Elizabeth's employ to root out Catholics at Oxford. When university fellows start turning up dead, Bruno finds himself in the middle of a long-standing feud over religion, love, and money. No one is what they seem, and though the culprit's identity is hinted at throughout the story, I was never quite sure until the very end.

Even more interesting is the fact that Bruno was a real person. The author, having read his various journals and other works, discovered he'd left Oxford with a bad taste in his mouth, and wondered why. This novel is a fanciful answer to that question, clever and quite readable without losing the gritty reality of the time period.

Picked this one up at today's meetup. Intriguing....

I should have written another journal entry for this one when I read it, a couple years ago. Now that I'm about to release it, I guess it's about time.

This is a terrific mystery set in Elizabethan Oxford. The detective, Giordano Bruno, was an actual historic figure, an excommunicated monk. The story here is, of course, fictional. Someone is killing the university fellows, and Bruno has to figure out who. It's a lot more complex than that, and a lot more character-driven than a lot of mysteries, which meant that I enjoyed it a lot more than I tend to like standard detective novels. A smart, atmospheric read.

I'm bringing this to the BC-DC meetup at Birdie's Cafe today, so that it can either find a Bookcrosser or other Birdie's patron to go home with today, or wait on the shelves of the OBCZ there until the right reader comes along.


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