“From the moment the perceptive and courageous Bruno agrees to go undercover, the story fairly races along, filled with murders, kidnapping, political intrigue, ciphers, romance, and a spot of torture. Those who enjoy a ripping yarn as well as history buffs who demand accuracy in the details will be satisfied.”
– Publishers Weekly
"Intrigue, subterfuge, machinations and assassinations, plus power struggles between queens: sounds like a great weekend of reading right there."
– Omnivoracious's Weekend Reading, The Amazon Book Review
“Excellent. This is historical mystery fiction at its finest.”
– Publishers Weekly (starred)[praise for S. J. Parris]
“A masterful work that deserves a place on all public-library historical-fiction shelves, and that should be recommended to Phillipa Gregory fans.”
– Booklist (starred)[praise for S. J. Parris]
“Hugely enjoyable. It’s played straight, but never humourlessly so, and there’s just enough 'proper' history amid the intrigue to keep purists on side.”
– The Guardian (UK)[praise for S. J. Parris]
“One of my favorite authors, and she is unquestionably our greatest living writer of historical thrillers. Few novelists inhabit a setting - any setting - with such confidence and command; fewer still devise plots of such cunning and craft. If Hilary Mantel, John Le Carré, and Michael Connelly were to join forces, they might gift us with a novel as atmospheric, intelligent, and addictive as Treachery - or indeed any of Parris’s books featuring monk-turned-spy Giordano Bruno.”
– A. J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window [praise for S. J. Parris]
“An evil bookseller and a terrifying brothel lie ahead; what’s not to like? Gripping and fun.”
– The Observer (London)[praise for S. J. Parris]
“With its twisting plot and vivid scene-setting, Treachery confirms Parris’s growing reputation as a writer of historical thrillers.”
– The Sunday Times (London)[praise for S. J. Parris]
“Parris’s Giordano Bruno series has been a joy. Her Elizabethan England is loud, pungent, and blessedly free of some of the genre’s more egregious clichés. She wears her research lightly: at home with the detail of the period, she is quite happy to engage in a little creative anachronism to bring the story home.”
– The Daily Telegraph (UK)[praise for S. J. Parris]
“There are echoes of C. J. Sansom’s here. Her prose is taut and compelling. Her wielding of the historical material is always convincing but never overwhelming.”
– The Times (London)[praise for S. J. Parris]
Giordano Bruno, the Italian philosopher-sleuth in this sumptuous series, goes undercover as a Jesuit priest to thwart the assassination plot before it can bring down the monarchy and throw the nation into anarchy.
But first, he must solve the exceptionally cruel murder of a much-loved woman whose abused body is discovered in an abandoned graveyard, “a pit of sluts, criminals and suicides.” The ferocity of that killing is fair warning of what’s ahead: scenes of prison torture (think: “strappado,” “scold’s bridle” and “the heretic’s fork”), culminating in a public execution so intense that it might cause one to toss one’s cookies.
– Marylin Stasio, New York Times Book Review
