RIZZIO

Longlisted for the 2022 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award. It's Saturday evening, 9 March 1566, and Mary, Queen of Scots, is six months pregnant. She's hosting a supper party, secure in her private chambers, here for a Parliament that will take Scotland by the shoulders and turn it from England to face Europe . She doesn't know that her Palace is surrounded - that, right now, an army of men is creeping upstairs to her chamber. They're coming to murder David Rizzio, her friend and secretary, the handsome Italian man who is smiling across the table at her. Mary's husband, Lord Darnley, wants it done in front of her and he wants her to watch. The novel opens with Rizzio playing tennis with his assassins, the cork ball soaring across the court in elegant strokes, watched by Henry Yair the Calvinist and fanatic. Denise Mina brilliantly portrays the recent Reformation, the sexual dynamics and politics of power - between men and women, monarch and subjects, master and servants. The period is masterfully researched yet lightly drawn, the characterisation quick, subtle and utterly convincing. This breathtakingly tense work is a tale of sex, secrets and lies, one that explores the lengths that men - and women - will go to in the search for love and power. 118 pages.