The Serpent’s Mark

by S. W. Perry Book 2 in the The Jackdaw Mysteries series.

First published 2019

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4.5(7,758)

London, 1591. Nicholas Shelby has returned to Bankside and to the uneasy work of physician and reluctant intelligence agent when Robert Cecil asks him to examine the practices of a mysterious Swiss doctor. The apparent medical inquiry centres on a vulnerable young patient, but Nicholas soon discovers that questions of diagnosis and treatment are entangled with a wider conspiracy. Bianca Merton is again drawn into the investigation, and the world around the Jackdaw brings sailors, foreigners, zealots and the playwright Christopher Marlowe across their path.

The threat extends beyond one household to the religious and political stability of Elizabeth I’s realm. Perry uses Nicholas’s scepticism about accepted medical authority to mirror the novel’s distrust of easy claims to religious or political certainty: physicians, preachers and spies all compete to define what is true. Against the background of Catholic-Protestant hostility and fear of treason, The Serpent’s Mark develops the series from a murder investigation into a more overtly international story of espionage and fanaticism.