Genre: Historical fiction
Publisher: Sharpe Books
Pub date: 19 June 2019
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Description from Amazon

1570.

A sadistic killer haunts England’s streets, sent by a secretive band of plotters known only as The Diamond League. With agents across Europe, their goal is to provoke a bloody, religious war.

Jack and Amy Cole – servants and spies – are reluctantly drawn into the service of Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham. Husband and wife are dispatched on different assignments.

Jack is deposited in York, where he is encouraged to betray his fellow Catholics. He infiltrates the Jesuit brotherhood – but can he bring himself to destroy them? As terror grips the north, he finds himself the target of a vicious assassin.

Meanwhile, Amy is dispatched to France, to spy on the household of Catherine de Medici. Disguised as a great lady, she is drawn into a glittering, yet perilous, world of intrigue. The spy’s every movement seems to be watched.

The Diamond League’s plot and personnel stretch from England to France. The bodies of Catholics and Protestants alike pile up across Europe. No one is safe.

The hunters become the hunted.

As the Diamonds’ maniacal assassin pursues them across Europe, Jack and Amy must kill or be killed.

Having been exiled Jack and Amy Cole find themselves in Scotland having been sent by Sir Henry Norris. Once again they are thrown into the centre of a plot, this time the aim is not quite clear to Walsingham.

Separated in different countries through kidnapping Amy and Jack must figure out the identity of the plotters before they become victims.

This is a great sequel, it’s fast paced and energetic. The characters are once again fabulous and I have grown to love Jack, his relationship with Walsingham develops in this book and it can be amusing at times.

Amy shows great intelligence and loyalty throughout and has become one of my favourite characters.

It’s a monstrous world. Good people have to do bad sometimes because there are such monsters.

As with the first book in this series, A Dangerous Trade, the writing style kept me engaged and I found myself not wanting to put this down until I knew what happened.

If you enjoy historical thrillers this is certainly worth a read, it’s very engaging whilst providing that element of true history which I absolutely love!

Veerapen provides an author’s note at the end explaining which parts of the story have been taken from real events, something I find fascinating to read. I am especially grateful to author’s who can provide interest in an area I may not have read about and after reading this I certainly wish to read more about Catherine de Medici, I found her intriguing in this book and whilst I haven’t read much about her I will be in the future thanks to Veerapen.

Divided Loyalties is available here Amazon UK

The next instalment The Last Judgement is next on my reading list!

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