I enjoy a really good historical murder mystery – after all, before a certain time there simply wasn’t a unified police force to hunt down murderers and bring them to justice. So it was often left to determined individuals to try to figure out whodunit – the meat and drink of so many murder mysteries. What really caught my attention about this offering is the setting – the court of Henry VIII and the intriguing main character.
BLURB: 1529, London. Jester Will Somers enjoys an enviable position at the court of Henry VIII. As the king’s entertainer, chief gossip-monger, spy and loyal adviser, he knows all of the king’s secrets – and almost everyone else’s within the walls of Greenwich Palace.
But when Will discovers the body of Spanish count Don Gonzalo while walking his trusted sidekick Nosewise in the courtyard gardens, and a blackmail note arrives soon after demanding information about the king, is one of his own closely guarded secrets about to be exposed? Trouble is afoot at the palace. Are the king’s enemies plotting a move against him? Will must draw on all his wit and ingenuity to get to the bottom of the treacherous and deadly goings-on at the court before further tragedy strikes . . .
REVIEW: Will is a fascinating protagonist, based on a real character who was a fool in Henry’s court and held this unique place there throughout the tumultuous Tudor dynasty. Westerson convincingly brings him to life in first-person viewpoint (I), so we get a ringside seat to his movement through the social shark tank that is life at court – and his interesting and often moving relationship with Henry, who he loves very much.
He is a big character with clearly loads of personal charm – and a hearty appetite for sexual encounters with both men and women. I’m not innately drawn to characters who demonstrate promiscuous behaviour, so it’s a tribute to Westerson’s writing that this didn’t get in the way of my bonding with Will. While the murder mystery was well plotted, with a plentiful cast of those with strong motivations for doing the foul deed – my overall focus wasn’t actually on the crime.
Westerson does a masterful job of depicting the court at a time of political turmoil. Henry has put aside Catherine of Aragon and is in the throes of trying to dissolve his marriage to her in order to make way for his new favourite – Anne Boleyn. Or Nan Bullen, as Will insultingly calls her. His loyalties, particularly at the start of the book, are firmly with Catherine and twelve-year-old Mary, who have been banished to a wing of the palace and placed under guard. In happier times, he would play for Catherine and was a firm favourite with both mother and daughter and his loyalties are torn emotionally, as he is pledged to Henry and talks to him in a way that no one else dares, calling him Harry to his face – and sometimes telling him baldly unpleasant truths that his courtiers and advisors don’t confront. This aspect of his relationship is based on historical fact, apparently, and I found it fascinating.
This happens to be a period of English history that I know a fair bit about. So the intricacies of the political and religious manoeuvring surrounding the Great Question, as Henry’s divorce came to be labelled, are familiar. But seeing them from the viewpoint of the court jester is both refreshing and thought provoking. I’m delighted to note that this is the first book in a series – and I’m very much looking forward to reading the next one. Will Somers is a new favourite. Highly recommended for fans of well written and researched historical murder mysteries. While I obtained an audiobook arc of Courting Dragons from the publisher via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
9/10
the most beautiful Spring I can remember. Our echiums just go from strength to strength… 
Non-gardening news: I sat in my sister’s garden last weekend more than 6 feet apart from her and caught up – I miss her so… She is still working flat-out at the chemists and returns home each night exhausted, as she finds wearing all the protective clothing hot and stifling – although she is very aware how important it is. Upsettingly, some customers have been incredibly rude. One man told her colleague that she looked ‘ugly and ridiculous in that get-up’ – as if it was some kind of fashion choice! Thank goodness people like that are in the minority… 
power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen before Jane dies giving birth to the male heir he most craves. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to the breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?
Murder is no laughing matter. Yet a prominent Indian scientist dies in a fit of giggles when a Hindu goddess appears from a mist and plunges a sword into his chest. The only one laughing now is the main suspect, a powerful guru named Maharaj Swami, who seems to have done away with his most vocal critic. Vish Puri, India’s Most Private Investigator, master of disguise and lover of all things fried and spicy, doesn’t believe the murder is a supernatural occurrence, and proving who really killed Dr. Suresh Jha will require all the detective’s earthly faculties. To get at the truth, he and his team of undercover operatives—Facecream, Tubelight, and Flush—travel from the slum where India’s hereditary magicians must be persuaded to reveal their secrets to the holy city of Haridwar on the Ganges.
Adam’s wandering eye lights on yet another conquest, it proves a chorus girl too far, and Sandra’s caught in the reverberations of her parents acrimonious parting. Coerced into restoring her depressed Mother to the bosom of a family Sandra never knew existed, she’s sucked into a situation that even for her is unnerving.
Lei is a member of the Paper caste, the lowest and most persecuted class of people in Ikhara. She lives in a remote village with her father, where the decade-old trauma of watching her mother snatched by royal guards for an unknown fate still haunts her. Now, the guards are back and this time it’s Lei they’re after — the girl with the golden eyes whose rumored beauty has piqued the king’s interest.
picture of Seth emerges from the one presented to the world.
When Joan Vaux is sent to live in the shadow of the Tower of London, she must learn to navigate the treacherous waters of this new England under the Tudors. Like the ravens, Joan must use her eyes and her senses, if Henry and his new dynasty are to prosper and thrive.
Brainfluff 