#1 – Shadow of a Queen
Paris, 24 August 1572. Newly graduated Robert Poley helps Francis Walsingham and his household escape the Catholic violence of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The experience draws him into Walsingham’s intelligence service despite Poley’s own Catholic upbringing. He begins infiltrating conspiracies intended to overthrow Elizabeth I…
#2 – Shadow of Poison
September 1586. After the exposure of the Babington Plot, Robert Poley adopts the identity of a notorious poisoner and enters a network of Portuguese and Spanish agents, Irish soldiers and Jewish couriers. His task is to discover whether Philip II’s intelligence service intends to kill Elizabeth…
#3 – Shadow of the Axe
England, 1599. After Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, bursts into Elizabeth I’s private chamber at Nonsuch, Robert Cecil begins planning the favourite’s final political destruction. He turns to Robert Poley, the intelligencer associated with the Babington investigation, and orders him undercover inside Essex House. Poley must…
#4 – Shadow of the Tower
Richmond Palace, March 1603. Elizabeth I is dying without publicly naming an heir, although Robert Cecil has already committed himself to James VI of Scotland. Robert Poley and his agents are ordered to protect the succession, beginning with the secret journey of a ring whose delivery…
#5 – Shadow of Treason
London, April 1603. An explosion at a gunpowder mill brings Robert Poley face to face with the fugitive Catholic Robert Catesby. After arrest and release, Catesby begins gathering men prepared to answer the new Stuart government with spectacular violence. Poley identifies the need for an explosives…