Will Shakespeare, newly returned from his adventures in Italy, has at last got his start in the career that will define his life, by joining one of London's acting troupes, the Queen's Men. An unexpected death while the company is on tour seems about to give him his big break, but instead he finds himself drawn reluctantly back into the murky world of espionage in a year when England faces the challenge of the Spanish Armada and the possibility of invasion.

Alive with period detail, this meticulously researched second novel in Anthony Wildman's Lost Years series takes the reader deep into the world of Elizabethan theatre just as it is entering upon its golden age, when giants such as Christopher Marlowe and Robert Greene were turning the world of English literature on its head.