The Queen's Cipher — David Taylor

‘The truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.' Award-winning investigative reporter David Taylor blends fact and fiction, suspense and satire into a vividly imagined novel in which an Oxford don uncovers a conspiracy of silence over the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. The ingenious codes and ciphers of a medieval German monk disappear after his death only for one of his number codes to surface in an Elizabethan spy's eye-witness account of what the Virgin Queen was doing behind closed doors. Centuries later, research fellow Freddie Brett deciphers this long-forgotten report in Lambeth Palace Library and finds himself following a trail that leads him to the very book that established the Stratford actor's credentials as a playwright and to a shadowy scientific brotherhood that treated drama as a form of mass communication. In unravelling this mystery Brett encounters not only academic opposition but an unseen enemy who will stop at nothing to possess the personal testimony of the man behind Shakespeare. As he races across Europe in search of such a prize, Brett's life is in danger. But he was to know the full story. Even if it kills him! The Queen's Cipher is an extraordinary book; a highly entertaining detective story that challenges conventional history.