The Tudor Rose Murders

G. J. Williams’s Tudor Rose Murders follow the historical scholar, mathematician and astrologer John Dee and his fictional apprentice Margaretta Morgan through murder investigations embedded in the dynastic and religious crises of the mid-Tudor period. The Conjuror’s Apprentice is set under Mary I in 1555; The Wolf’s Shadow moves to 1558 and reopens the Thomas Seymour scandal; The Cygnet Prince uses Elizabeth I’s smallpox and succession crisis of 1562; and The Assassin’s Mark begins in 1570 after the Northern Rebellion.

The series mixes historical crime and court intrigue with occult and supernatural elements associated with Dee and Margaretta. Dee, Elizabeth I and many courtiers appear under their historical identities, while Margaretta, the murders and the principal conspiracies are fictional. The books therefore use real Tudor political crises as frameworks for mysteries rather than presenting their invented plots as undocumented history.