S. W. Perry is a British historical novelist who worked as a journalist and broadcaster before retraining as an airline pilot. He is best known for vividly researched crime fiction set in Elizabethan England, where medicine, religion, espionage and political uncertainty intersect. His debut, The Angel’s Mark, was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger and was selected as a Walter Scott Prize Academy Recommended Read in 2019. Perry lives in Worcestershire with his wife.
His principal work is the Nicholas Shelby series, also marketed as the Jackdaw Mysteries. Beginning with The Angel’s Mark, the novels follow physician Nicholas Shelby and apothecary Bianca Merton through the dangers of late Elizabethan London. The sequence continues with The Serpent’s Mark, The Saracen’s Mark, The Heretic’s Mark, The Rebel’s Mark and The Sinner’s Mark, moving through plague, religious conflict, espionage, foreign intrigue and plots against Elizabeth I. Perry uses figures such as Robert Cecil and the machinery of the Elizabethan intelligence network to anchor the mysteries in the politics of the 1590s, while Shelby’s medical work gives the books an additional focus on disease, anatomy and everyday urban life.
