The fourth book in Karen Harper’s excellent series involving sleuth Queen Elizabeth I is the best so far and easily the most exciting. The Queene’s Cure has a fast-paced climax against the backdrop of the horrors of the pox in Elizabethan London. What also makes this novel frightening is the brief glimpse into the medical profession in the mid-sixteenth century. Harper mentions in her Author’s Notes that medicine during this era was frequently shocking. With some of the cures mentioned in The Queene’s Cure, it’s a wonder more patients didn’t die from the medicine rather than the disease. Did no one ever question the source of ground unicorn’s horn?
But people, including Elizabeth, were so scared to death of the pox and the plague that they were willing to try anything. Not as lethal as the plague, the pox left its survivors horribly scarred for life.
In The Queene’s Cure, someone leaves a very life-like effigy of Elizabeth in her coach during a visit to the London Royal College of Physicians. The face of the effigy has been scored to imitate pox scars. She sets her Private Privy Council to investigating who put it in her coach and how.
Her Private Privy Council without Meg Milligrew. Her former apothecary Sarah Wilton alias Meg Milligrew has been banished from court for borrowing one of Elizabeth’s gowns without permission and impersonating her Majesty, even forging her signature.
Sarah runs an apothecary with her brutish and often violent husband Ben. She longs to be back in good graces with her Queen and in her court. Until then she must hang out on the fringes of the crowd and in alleyways when Elizabeth appears in public.
The Private Privy Council is finding the investigation frustrating. Then a body of a young woman is found in a fountain in the royal courtyard. She’s first thought to be a pox victim but when the nature of her death is revealed, the mystery takes a very dark turn.
Then Elizabeth nearly dies of the pox. She recovers but soon realizes that her infection was not an act of God. She’s stunned at the measures her enemies will go to remove her from the throne. In pursuing the conspirators, the queen and friends are caught in a rather too-convenient trap.
Harper turns up the action and suspense as Elizabeth nearly meets the same fate as the girl in the fountain. The author also bridges the seemingly impossible gap between amateur sleuth and queen of the realm with no problem. One would think that a monarch of her standing would not be involved in such adventures. However, Harper spins stories that show Elizabeth consistent with everything else that has been written about her. The conundrums and mysteries that face her are those that directly affect her and the ones closest to her, like her life-long companion Kat Ashley, her advisor Lord Cecil, her fool Ned Topside and the mute Gil. Therefore, Elizabeth has a personal and vested interest in solving murders.
The first three novels were exciting but Harper bumps up the action and suspense in The Queene’s Cure. I hope the trend continues.
But people, including Elizabeth, were so scared to death of the pox and the plague that they were willing to try anything. Not as lethal as the plague, the pox left its survivors horribly scarred for life.
In The Queene’s Cure, someone leaves a very life-like effigy of Elizabeth in her coach during a visit to the London Royal College of Physicians. The face of the effigy has been scored to imitate pox scars. She sets her Private Privy Council to investigating who put it in her coach and how.
Her Private Privy Council without Meg Milligrew. Her former apothecary Sarah Wilton alias Meg Milligrew has been banished from court for borrowing one of Elizabeth’s gowns without permission and impersonating her Majesty, even forging her signature.
Sarah runs an apothecary with her brutish and often violent husband Ben. She longs to be back in good graces with her Queen and in her court. Until then she must hang out on the fringes of the crowd and in alleyways when Elizabeth appears in public.
The Private Privy Council is finding the investigation frustrating. Then a body of a young woman is found in a fountain in the royal courtyard. She’s first thought to be a pox victim but when the nature of her death is revealed, the mystery takes a very dark turn.
Then Elizabeth nearly dies of the pox. She recovers but soon realizes that her infection was not an act of God. She’s stunned at the measures her enemies will go to remove her from the throne. In pursuing the conspirators, the queen and friends are caught in a rather too-convenient trap.
Harper turns up the action and suspense as Elizabeth nearly meets the same fate as the girl in the fountain. The author also bridges the seemingly impossible gap between amateur sleuth and queen of the realm with no problem. One would think that a monarch of her standing would not be involved in such adventures. However, Harper spins stories that show Elizabeth consistent with everything else that has been written about her. The conundrums and mysteries that face her are those that directly affect her and the ones closest to her, like her life-long companion Kat Ashley, her advisor Lord Cecil, her fool Ned Topside and the mute Gil. Therefore, Elizabeth has a personal and vested interest in solving murders.
The first three novels were exciting but Harper bumps up the action and suspense in The Queene’s Cure. I hope the trend continues.
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