The Fyre Mirror: An Elizabeth I Mystery by Karen Harper

From the Publisher

Elizabethan England comes alive as its young queen struggles to stop a serial killer who uses fire as a weapon. From commoner to courtier, from the delights of rural England to the streets of teeming London, the queen and her coterie turn detectors in Karen Harper's acclaimed mystery series.

Smitten with spring fever, Elizabeth Tudor escapes London for fantastical Nonsuch Palace in the sweet Surrey countryside. There she hopes to relax and pose for the official royal portrait for which she is holding a competition. Elizabeth is both delighted and dismayed when her young court artist, Gil Sharpe, returns early from schooling in Italy, where he has also been spying for the crown.

But one of her artists is burned to death, and portraits of the queen are going up in flames. When she hears that her rival, the dangerous Mary, Queen of Scots, has been peering in mirrors and announcing, "I see the next queen of England!" Elizabeth summons her Privy Plot Council.

Has the arsonist been sent by foreign foes or is it someone in her own court? Or is the "running boy" apparition really a ghost out to avenge a terrible past tragedy caused by the Tudors?

Time is running out, because the enemy who stalks the queen means to destroy not only her portraits and artists, but her very life.

Library Journal

Now in her early thirties, Elizabeth I wants to approve an "official" portrait for distribution in the realm. Three portrait contenders accompany Elizabeth and the court to the mythical Nonsuch Palace, where an arsonist's fire consumes an artist's tent and its two occupants. Elizabeth leaps into action, has the corpses and tents examined, prods her "privy plot council" into motion, and confronts further acts of the pyromaniac. A truly vibrant protagonist, thoroughly satisfying characterization, attention to detail, and credible plotting mark this as an outstanding historical. Harper, the author of six other Elizabeth I mysteries, lives in Columbus, OH, and Naples, FL. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

As she asserts absolute control over her image and most parts of English government, Queen Elizabeth I decrees a competition for a royal portrait. Political, yes, competitive, certainly, but it also proves unexpectedly dangerous. Moving her court from London to Nonesuch Palace, her father's whimsical architectural masterpiece in the country-where she can keep a close eye on her elderly companion, Lady Katherine Ashley, who's being cared for by nursemaid Floris Minton-the queen sits for portraits by three painters: Lavinia Teerlinc, Will Kendale, and Henry Heatherly. Much to the artists' displeasure, Elizabeth's protege, young painter Gilbert Sharp, joins the competition upon returning from an Italian apprenticeship. When Kendale's tent in the encampment outside Nonesuch goes up in flames, killing the painter and his boy-toy, Elizabeth commands the skills of scientist John Dee, who notices an unusual burn pattern and a trussed-up exit, clues that point to arson and murder courtesy of an exotic incendiary device. Elizabeth, haunted by memories of a fire in her youth, resumes her unlikely and anachronistic role as detective, worrying as signs point in turn to Gil, to Dee's pretty second wife, and even back to injustices perpetrated by her father, Henry VIII. Elizabeth (The Queene's Christmas, 2003, etc.) makes an appealingly courageous detective if you can swallow Harper's anachronistic portrait of the monarch as action hero.

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