The Dark Lady — Colin Falconer

It is not easy having the same name as one of London's darlings. People make comparisons, and you are then forever known as the loafer, the idiot cousin, the burden. He had come to London to make something of himself, like his cousin THE William Shakespeare, but instead of fame and fortune there is just the humiliation of living penniless in Will's loft and having his heart broken by a titled and sophisticated lady. His only talents seem to brawling and bumping into the right people in disreputable taverns. Will's Black Lady hires him to help a rich patron recover a letter. It seems like easy money; but in no time at all he finds himself tied hand and foot in a bear pit, with only an enraged bear and two of the Queen's cut-throat secret agents for company. And from there things can only get worse. Lady Elizabeth Walsall returns from the country to break his heart yet again, and before long he finds himself rubbing shoulders with the Queen's favourite, Essex, and somehow embroiled in a plot to poison the Queen. The second in the William Shakespeare Detective Agency series charts the underworld career of the less well known of Stratford upon Avon's most famous family. “For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.”