This book is too good. Allison Epstein is too talented. It's not fair.

Christopher Marlowe was a fast-living, bar-brawling, blaspheming contemporary of William Shakespeare, and while he's not as well known today among people who weren't English lit majors, he was one of the preeminent poets of his time and could have been just as prolific as Shakespeare was if he had managed to live to a ripe old age. Here, he's imagined as a young man recruited to spy for Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, and the result is truly a feast of literary delights.

When I say I could not put this book down, I'm not being figurative. I stayed up reading until my eyes gave out on me. I cooked dinner with a kindle in my hand. This book is just so, so good. The prose is elegant from start to finish. Not a single word in these 366 pages is wasted. The plot doesn't lag for a second. Every line of dialogue is sharp and clever. Characters leap off the page. Historical figures are imbued with humor and presence and heartbreaking humanity. I devoured this story while dreading its inevitable conclusion, and it is perfect to the last page.