![]() ![]() Kit’s lover, Tom, accuses him of seeking out danger, but rapid-fire POV changes necessary to advance the action-packed plot prevent the reader from getting a full sense of him, and the romance passages are the stuff of bodice rippers. Epstein takes liberties with Kit’s ultimate fate (the circumstances of his murder remain disputed), but in Kit she also creates a Marlowe too all-over-the-map to be plausible. His Protestant minders track and arrest all involved, but while Kit’s treasonous friends go to the gallows, he is set free. After he is caught spying by Catholic rebels, he gets out of the jam by claiming to be a double agent working on their behalf, then travels to the Netherlands to counterfeit gold coin for the Catholic cause. ![]() Having infiltrated the household of Mary, Queen of Scots and foiling the Babington Plot, Kit has a crisis of conscience over Mary’s execution. ![]() ![]() Kit, as Marlowe is called, is rarely caught writing his “mighty line.” He’s too deep into espionage, uncovering Catholic conspiracies. With a witty, captivating protagonist and fast. Epstein’s diverting debut gallivants through Elizabethan England clutching the breeches of playwright Christopher Marlowe, here in service to the queen as a spy. A Tip for the Hangman draws you into a morally convoluted world of spies, treason, politics, romance and murder. A Tip For the Hangman by Allison Epstein (Doubleday, 26.95) is an exceptional, highly entertaining historical novel set in Elizabethan England in. ![]()
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