THE QUEEN'S MEN by Oliver Clements

Despite many precautions and secrecy, the personal carriage of Queen Elizabeth is violently ambushed in Waltham Forest on a dark and foggy November night in 1577. As so many shots from the assassins’ arquebuses have pieced the wooden carriage, word quickly spreads to London that the Queen had died.

Worried about Catholic plots against her, the young queen had made her own principal private secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, her spymaster and he quickly starts the investigation into this horrible plot to kill Queen Elizabeth. He has spies everywhere, but had no warning and has no inkling of who is to blame. How can that be?

Walsingham must find out who is behind this plot before another attempt is made. The Queen is found to be alive, but unwell. Hasty plans are made to stall out any seeking to end the Protestant reign and move back to a Catholic one under Mary, Queen of the Scots. These plans are made in haste with deep trepidation with the barest of hope. Can they possibly succeed? Could they find out who was behind this well-planned plot before another is made?

THE QUEEN’S MEN is the fascinating sequel to THE EYES OF THE QUEEN in the Agents of the Crown series by Oliver Clements and it is just as exciting and suspenseful. Clements has a deep understanding of the uncertainty of the first Elizabethan times and its ruthless politics. The key characters in THE QUEEN’S MEN are authentically described as being the very men who try to save her life and uphold the law; yet, if they fail, they would pay with their lives if she died and her assassins would be honoured as heroes! They are in fact an early version of the second Queen Elizabeth’s M16 Secret Service and much depends on them.

If you are fans of Ken Follett or enjoy quality historical fiction; then, you will surely find much to relish in THE QUEEN’S MEN! So, get your copy and be surprised by how they plan to protect the queen and England against their many enemies with few resources! For myself, I look forward to more Agents of the Crown novels!

The Agents of the Crown—the “rollicking new historical thriller” (The New York Times Book Review) series—returns with this riveting novel following the original MI6 agent as he is assigned a dangerous mission to recreate a weapon from antiquity.

As she travels through Waltham Forest, Queen Elizabeth I is ambushed by masked gunmen who leave her carriage riddled with holes before disappearing into the night. The Queen’s Private Secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, is tasked with finding the perpetrators, about whom they know precious little. But someone alerted the gunman to the route of the Queen’s carriage, and Walsingham knows that the assassins will not stop until she’s dead.

While Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council debates how to best secure the throne in the wake of the attack and Catholic Spain’s further intrusion into the Low Countries, the queen herself searches for the ultimate weapon to protect her country and throne: Greek fire, the recipe of which disappeared with the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. She orders her friend John Dee—scientist, philosopher, and spy—to rediscover this vital secret, despite his misgivings. For he understands that in a world fraught with coded messages, ruthless adversaries, and deadly plot, his mission to secure his nation’s future may prove impossible, unless he deploys the most effective weapon of all: intelligence.

With his “twisty, fast-paced” (Publishers Weekly) prose, Oliver Clements weaves another white-knuckled and intelligent historical thriller set in the Age of the Enlightenment with parallels in the present day.