Ex-monk Giordano Bruno holds some pretty radical views, so it is hardly surprising when he has to escape the Inquisition.  But fate is kind to him, and a few years later he is a respected academic living in England and recruited by Walsingham to root out plotters.  Bruno’s first mission sees him going undercover to Oxford, ostensibly to debate, but secretly to find out if there is as much Catholic scheming going on as his employer fears.  He has his own agenda too: to find a lost text of alchemy that is purported to contain the secret to make a man equal to God.  Soon after he arrives, the murders start...

This intricate tale of treachery, trouble and treason reminded me of a cross between C J Sansom, Umberto Eco and Dan Brown, so if you like any (or all) of these writers, this ought to please.  Bruno tells the story in his own words, giving it a necessary immediacy, concerning as it does modern topics such as religious intolerance and the right to freedom of speech.  As well as solving a string of gory murders, Bruno falls in love with Sophia, the daughter of the college rector, Dr Underhill.  This adds a frisson of romance to the tale, as well as showing how such an intelligent woman would have been trapped by the times she lived in.  Ms Parris has a good, descriptive style that is chatty enough to be easy to read yet not anachronistic, which involves the reader from the outset.  However, none of the characters are somehow as involving as the narrative, so it is hard to care very much about any of them.  There is rather more talk than action, too, making much of the story as academic as its subject matter.  After putting the book down I did not find that it stayed in the mind afterwards as much as it could have done, but it remains nonetheless a fascinating glimpse of the period that is well researched and cleverly plotted if not particularly original.