Peter Tonkin continues his deep dive into the sometimes grim and sometimes fabulously opulent world of sixteenth-century Europe as he returns to spymaster Robert Poley’s adventures. In this novel, spanning Paris, London, Eyemouth, Sheffield, and more, he brings to vivid life the complexity – always on the brink of terror – of events during the captivity of Mary Queen of Scots.

Mary’s enforced and long-term imprisonment in England remains one of the best-mined and most fascinating periods of history – and in particular in the history of espionage. With the reliable Poley as our guide, though, the plots and counterplots become far more explicable. Even readers familiar with some of the major beats and figures – Mary herself, of course, but also the likes of Francis Walsingham and Anthony Babington – will find much new: Tonkin effortlessly conjures up some of the era’s real-life, lesser-known miscreants, agents, and officers, from Edmund Neville to John Somerville to Esme Stuart to Robert Catlyn. This is not just a gripping novel full of the requisite twists, turns, and shifting motives but an impeccably researched one – indeed, the author is to be commended not only for his breadth of reading (and the artistry of turning that research into an evocative drama) but for his careful and useful author’s note, detailing each chapter’s historical basis.

Above all, Shadow of a Queen succeeds as an historical novel not because of its research but because it weaves a fascinating tale out of the facts, and because it’s a tale told by a pro when it comes to colouring in the Elizabethan world (as ever, Tonkin writes as though he were there). If Mary Queen of Scots’s interminable period of captivity was a shadowy one in which a shadow-queen engaged her considerable faculties in plotting her escape (and more), this novel is a must-read for anyone looking for a light shone on both.

Steven Veerapen is a historian and the author of Witches: A King’s Obsession.