Alms for Oblivion

"On a foggy morning in the autumn of 1602, a boyhood friend of Nick Revill's arrives in London. And when Peter Agate announces that he intends to try his hand at acting, what else can Nick do but invite him to join his own troupe, the Chamberlain's Company, who are about to put on a private production of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida for the Lawyers of Middle Temple." "Yet within days Peter Agate is found dead, stabbed to death at Nick's lodgings - and this is only the beginning of a sequence of violent deaths, each of them somehow implicating Nick and pulling the hangman's noose ever tighter around his neck. To save himself, Nick must discover the real murderer among a varied cast of suspects, including an aristocratic and eccentric brother and sister, a troublemaker from a rival company and an ex-actor who once saw the Devil himself on stage." His pursuit of the murderer takes Nick through the Inns of Court, into a Southwark brothel, and on a very unwelcome visit to one of the City's most notorious gaols. Yet, strangely, Nick is to find that the resolution to this murder mystery lies not in London's fog-bound streets but in the clear and wholesome air of the English countryside.