In 1593 the brilliant but controversial young playwright Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death in a Deptford lodging house. The circumstances were shady the official account—a violent quarrel over the bill or recknynge—has been long regarded as dubious.

Here in a tour de force of scholarship and ingenuity Charles Nicholl penetrates four centuries of obscurity to reveal not only a complex and unsettling story of entrapment and betrayal chimerical plot and sordid felonies but also a fascinating vision of the underside of the Elizabethan world.

Provides the sheer enjoyment of fiction and might just be true.—Michael Kenney Boston Globe

Mr. Nicholls glittering reconstruction of Marlowes murder is only one of the many fascinating aspects of this book. Indeed The Reckoning is equally compelling for its masterly evocation of a vanished world a world of Elizabethan scholars poets con men alchemists and spies a world of Machiavellian malice intrigue and dissent.—Michiko Kakutani New York Times

The rich substance of the book is his detail the thick texture of betrayal and evasion which was Marlowes life.—Thomas Flanagan Washington Post Book World

Winner of the Crime Writers Gold Dagger Award for Nonfiction Thriller