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The Irish Fiasco: Stolen Silver in Seventeenth Century Ireland
Price range: $3.99 through $24.99Luke’s murder investigation and search for stolen silver is complicated by intriguing Royalists, Irish rebels, influential women, treacherous comrades, a loveable witch, maladjusted siblings, murderous charcoal burners, and devious priests.
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Chesapeake Chaos: Malevolence and Betrayal in Colonial Maryland
Price range: $3.99 through $24.99In 1650 Luke is in Maryland acting for Cromwell, and the colony’s proprietor Lord Baltimore, to assess the political situation. He becomes involved with a dysfunctional planter family and confronts several murders. His mission is complicated by planter rivalry, Indian wars, a Jesuit mission, a Puritan settlement and the incursion of a foreign power
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The Black Thistle: A Scottish Conspiracy
Price range: $3.99 through $24.99In 1651, a fatally wounded Scottish trooper is found by an English patrol. Before he takes his last breath, he reveals the details of a major plot being hatched against Scottish leaders and English generals within Clarke Castle the same castle where many kidnapped Scots are being held.
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The Angelic Assassin: Criminals and Conspirators
Price range: $3.99 through $19.99In 1652 politicians secretly plan to disband the army. Its commander Oliver Cromwell sends Luke to foil these plotters, and find the murderers of three excise officers who stumbled across illegal ammunition that could be used against the army and its supporters. Luke uncovers a combination of corrupt politicians, powerful criminals, a bevy of would-be beautiful assassins, foreign agents and an unhinged religious leader whose various interests endanger Luke’s life, and threaten the army’s existence.
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The Frown of Fortune: A French Affair
Price range: $3.99 through $19.99In 1653 Luke and his deputy Harry are sent to Paris to negotiate secretly with the exiled king. They are separated and pursue independent investigations. Harry, who reaches the royal court attempts to solve the murders of two ladies-in-waiting, while a disabled Luke investigates the death of an aristocrat’s wife. The investigations are complicated by a feisty abbess, hysterical nuns, an unscrupulous courtier, a Canadian adventurer, and a rampaging bear. Thee search for English Catholic treasure focusses everybody’s attention.
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The Spanish Relation: Murder in Cromwellian England
Price range: $3.99 through $19.99Luke, Cromwell’s top agent spends late 1654 and much of 1655 in Somerset inquiring into the murder of an obscure squire. The victim’s family and village are deeply divided revealing a multitude of suspects-feuding relatives, corrupt politicians, Royalist supporters, Spanish agents, religious fanatics, a wanton witch, and a mysterious man in a golden cape
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The Malevolent Isle: Murder, Magic and Mystery: Yorkshire 1660
Price range: $3.99 through $23.99Luke’s first mission for the incoming King is to investigate the administration of an aging autocratic peer who is also a purveyor of magic. This marquis is undermined by a rebellious son who openly supports the work of an outlawed Catholic priest-and indulges in shady land deals.
Luke’s investigation confronts a defrocked Anglican vicar, several promiscuous women and a series of murders whose motives may lie in the present, or in the distant past.
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The Second Son: Dynastic Disasters and Political Intrigue: England 1660
Price range: $3.99 through $23.99Luke, now the King’s special agent is sent to one of the home counties to assess the suitability of the shire’s gentry to represent the King across the county, in Parliament and on the bench. Luke finds a fractured Royalist community divided by family feuds, social class, generational disputes, and bitterness between those who went into exile with the King and those who remained behind and suffered under the Republic. The assessment is sidetracked by an alleged massacre, a disappearing Cromwellian magistrate, ambitious, conniving and predatory women, a vindictive husband, secret societies, the plague, closely kept secrets, man eating animals, and a spate of attempted and successful murders.
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Brides for A King: Fathers, Daughters and the National Interest: England & France 1660-1
Price range: $3.99 through $24.99Luke is ordered by the King to investigate the intrigues and deaths surrounding the King’s forthcoming marriage-with particular emphasis on England’s foreign policy and national security.
The increased attacks on past mistresses and potential wives might be central to these concerns or stem from the simple jealousy of women anxious to obtain the King’s favour or lying about their past relationships, conflicts often within the same family; or do these current problems stem from events that occurred during the King’s decade in exile; or the current greed and ambition of powerful noble dynasties.
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Trouble in Tangiers: Islamic Incursions, Portuguese Perfidy? 1661
Price range: $3.99 through $24.99In 1661 Charles II put an end to the diplomatic wrangle between European powers to provide him with a wife. He announced he would marry the sister of the disabled King of Portugal, Catherine of Braganza. As part of the marriage treaty Portugal ceded the strategic north African port of Tangiers to England in return for three thousand English troops to assist Portugal maintain its independence from Spain. The instability of both Portuguese and Moroccan politics and conflict within the city itself forced Charles to send his agent Colonel Luke Tremayne to investigate the general situation and forestall any attempts by Moroccan war lords to undermine English influence. Their possession of an emerald and silver ring becomes crucial to such an end.
Geoff Quaife, born and educated in Melbourne Australia has been a university lecturer, historian and academic administrator spending most of his working life in Armidale in regional NSW. He is the author of academic works on witchcraft and sexual and the fifteen earlier Luke Tremayne adventures.