A Spy at Hampton Court - Kit Scarlett Tudor Mysteries #3

 

A Spy at Hampton Court is the third Kit Scarlett Tudor mystery by Adele Jordan. Released 23rd Dec. 2022 by Sapere Books, it's 254 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately. For Kindle Unlimited subscribers, this book is currently included in the KU subscription library to borrow and read for free. The other books in the series (now up to 4 books, with a fifth due out in June 2023), are also currently available on KU. 

This is a spy/espionage thriller set in the late Elizabethan period. Political machinations and currying favor in the court of the queen can cause dangerous, even deadly, fallout. One of the more valuable and competent operatives in the employ of potentially untrustworthy spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham is an intelligent and capable female protege called Kit Scarlett. She and her Scottish colleague (and more?) Iomhar again are set to foil an assassination attempt against the aged and unwell Queen Elizabeth. They're sent on a mission to uncover and retrieve details of a treasonous plot to destroy Hampton Court palace, the main residence of Queen Elizabeth. It's another well written installment to this excellent historical series.

The author is quite capable, and the characters are three dimensional and believable. Although part of a series, necessary backstory is written into the story, so it works well enough as a standalone. The dialogue (of necessity) is written to be entirely accessible to modern readers, and happily the author has managed to avoid glaring modern anachronisms. The adventure is engagingly well written around a framework of actual people and events from the period. It's skillfully interwoven and not always easy to see where real history shades into fiction.

Four stars. With 4 books extant currently and a fifth due out soon, this would be a great choice for a series binge/buddy read. Fans of Ariana Franklin, Andrew Swanston, and SJ Parris will find a lot to enjoy here.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.