Desperate Remedy

Thief. Informer. Double-dealer. Pimp. Will Shadwell may not be the most moral of men, but to gentleman spy Henry Gresham, he is invaluable. In the reign of King James I, a man must know his enemies to survive, and Shadwell is one of Gresham's best sources.

Then Shadwell is brutally murdered. Before Gresham is able to establish why, he is summoned by the man he fears most: Robert Cecil, the King's Machiavellian Chief Secretary. Cecil wants Gresham to investigate Sir Francis Bacon's private life, but when Gresham begins his inquiries, he uncovers a plot so audacious it is scarcely believable, involving a conspiring clutch of Catholic lords and a trail of gunpowder underneath the Houses of Parliament.