Tamburlaine Must Die

January 17, 2005
Christopher Marlowe, "playwright, scenester, and celebrated wit," was a superstar in Elizabethan London. Unfortunately for him, Elizabethan London was a risky place to attract notice. In Welsh's slim, taut follow-up to her 2003 debut, The Cutting Room
, she reimagines the bitter end of the great dramatist's life, retold in his own words on the eve of his still-unsolved murder. The beginning of the end comes in the form of a messenger from the queen's Privy Council, summoning him back to the city from a comfortable ensconcement at his patron's country house. Turns out that heretical verses signed by Tamburlaine, his most famous (and famously ruthless) creation, have been turning up all over plague-decimated London in his absence. Faced with charges of heresy and blasphemy, Marlowe has an unspecified, "but clearly short," window of opportunity to offer up a more appealing scapegoat in his place. Welsh doesn't waste a word on any of the florid romanticizing so common in historical fiction: no heaving, corseted breasts or speeding steeds here. Just a hard, sharp little rapier of a thriller/mystery that packs a punishing schedule of sex, violence, wheeling and double-dealing into its brief length. The tension is unabated throughout this frantic, 72-hour dash among backstabbers, spies, murderers and prostitutes—even as Marlowe realizes that not even he will be able to talk his way out of this one.

December 1, 2004
Claiming to be hurriedly penned by Christopher Marlowe on the eve of his own mysterious murder, this Elizabethan thriller describes the great English playwright's descent toward death in London. As the story unfolds, Marlowe is betrayed to the all-powerful Privy Council, both by his own blasphemous words and by a nefarious agent masquerading as his heroic character Tamburlaine. In the few days of freedom that the Council has granted him, Marlowe hunts for his nemesis, accompanied by his only friend, a debauched actor named Blaize. During his search, Marlowe encounters a sadistic gaoler in an alley beside Newgate prison, a treacherous but erudite spy in a seedy pub, and a frightened whore whom he straddles while Blaize looks on. Welsh captures the underbelly of 1690s London with touches of frightening realism. In the company of unsavory characters, Marlowe is portrayed as a violent and drunken protagonist whose degeneracy overwhelms his genius. Unfortunately, the narrative fails to convey adequately the sense of trepidation and urgency that one would expect from such a desperate man, while the language seldom reflects the literary talent of its alleged author. The preponderance of description over action, a thin plot, and a predictable denouement also detract from the novella's suspense. Recommended for larger fiction collections and for those readers who enjoyed Welsh's more successful first mystery, The Cutting Room.-Joseph M. Eagan, Enoch Pratt Free Lib., Baltimore

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.