The Book of Martyrs

A Novel

Nick Beckett

1595. A former thief and a famed astrologist are engulfed by persecution and murder during England’s Golden Age, in this new historical mystery series set during the colorful Tudor Era.

1595. An aging Sir Francis Drake sails from Plymouth, heading south on a doomed mission of plunder. It will end with his burial at sea off the coast of Panama—at least he'll be warm.

Back in England, semi-reformed thief Kate Mayfield and her uncle, the notorious astrological physician Simon Mayfield, are stuck in rain-lashed Devon. They're on the run from the law as a dismal summer turns into a turbulent autumn. Caught in a violent storm, they seek refuge at Dartwater Hall, a decaying manor house set in bleak moorlands. But death has followed them there.

When the master of the house dies in gruesome circumstances, they learn that a murderer is hiding in the shadows. Trapped and hunted, the two fugitives must solve a mystery with its roots deep in Tudor England's bloody past before they, too, become martyrs to their own, ignoble cause.

Nick Beckett is the pen name of Niall Boyce. Niall studied medicine at Oxford University and subsequently trained as a psychiatrist. In 2023, he completed a PhD on "dreaming in Renaissance England" at Birkbeck College, London. He has written on Renaissance life and culture for Shakespeare's Globe and the King's College London Centre for Early Modern Studies. Alongside his day job at the Wellcome Trust, he is busy writing the next novel in the Simon & Kate Mayfield mystery series. Nick lives in London.

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Endorsements & Reviews

Early praise for The Book of Martyrs:

“Dark, creepy, and compelling, but also delightful, twisty and entertaining. So full of mud and creepy sounds and sectarian violence, but it still had a wonderful feel to it that counterbalanced the grim realities of sixteenth-century life. I was hooked on the desolate setting and its secretive residents.” Andreina Cordani, author of The Twelve Days of Murder and Murder at the Christmas Emporium