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Robert Carey

This page lists novels that feature the 1590's courtier and the Queen's Deputy Warden in Carlisle Robert Carey. Omnibus editions are also included.



This page is divided into two sections.

Robert Carey
- novels
- omnibus editions

 

Robert Carey: Novels

A Famine of Horses

P.F. Chisholm

Hodder & Stoughton

1994

A Robert Carey novel.

"In the year 1592, Sir Robert Carey, a handsome courtier, comes north to Carlisle to take up his new post as Deputy Warden of the West March. He has wrangled his appointment to be nearer to his true love, a married woman, and farther from the gimlet eyes of his creditors and the disapproving eye of his father (the Queen's cousin--possibly her half-brother). And of course, he can use the money.... Sir Robert is quick to realize he won't see a profit from the perks if he fails to keep the peace. Alas, he is quickly challenged by the murder of a local lad, the possible betrayal of a disappointed rival, the ire of the lady's husband, and the question of the horses - the hundreds of horses being stolen from all over the neighborhood. It's hard to say whether the greater danger lies without the city walls amidst the scheming Scots--or within, amidst the unruly English garrison."
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A Season of Knives

P.F. Chisholm

Hodder & Stoughton

1995

A Robert Carey novel.

"The rowdy Grahams plan to kidnap Elizabeth as she journeys home to her husband. While Sir Robert storms out to stop them, someone murders the man he has just sacked from his post of paymaster to the Carlisle garrison. When Sir Robert returns, he finds his servant Barnabus slung into the castle dungeon, accused of the crime, and his arch enemy Sir Richard Lowther scheming to have Carey arrested for masterminding the murder.... When even faithful Sergeant Dodd is prepared to believe he did it, the courtier finds his hands full--while ruin stares him in the face--as he juggles the murder inquiry and untangles a skein of love and greed that reminds him most uncomfortably of how carefully he must conceal his love for Elizabeth."
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A Surfeit of Guns

P.F. Chisholm

Hodder & Stoughton

1996

A Robert Carey novel.

"One black night in 1592, Carey is on night patrol along the unsettled border anchored by the garrison in Carlisle. It's a disaster. First, there's the fugitive he has to hand over to the warring Scots. Next come Wee Colin Elliot's sheep stealers. And then a gun explodes and takes off the hand of one of Carey's men. Back in Carlisle, Carey soon learns more faulty guns lie in the armoury in place of the sound weapons shipped in from Newcastle only last week. When these explosive deathtraps are stolen, he sets off in pursuit of both batches of guns - and the thieves. The search ends in Dumfries where King James VI of Scotland - potentially King James I of England when his cousin Elizabeth dies - and his raucous court have assembled. James is as dissolute as ever, lovely Lady Elizabeth Widdrington, Carey's true love, is still shackled to her husband, and seductive Signora Bonnetti takes a serious interest in Carey and in the missing guns. Will the frustrated courtier be gallant enough to flirt with the Signora - and with treason?"
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A Plague of Angels

P.F. Chisholm

Hodder & Stoughton

1998

A Robert Carey novel.

"Sir Robert Carey, after the summer's misadventures in Carlisle, is back to London upon a summons from his father. Carey is on difficult terms with his powerful sire, Henry, Lord Hunsdon. Hunsdon, son of Anne Boleyn's elder sister, Mary - and probably of a young King Henry VIII - swings a lot of weight as "cousin" to Queen Elizabeth. But Hunsdon needs his ingenious younger son, Carey to sort out the difficulties his elder son has got himself into as an innocent party in a plot to discredit the family. Accompanied by the shrewd Sergeant George Dodd, who's like a fish out of water as he copes with the strange Londoners, Carey tackles Catholics, treachery, and such persons known to history and students of literature as George Greene and Christopher Marlowe who are working as spies and double agents. Most arresting is a portrait of a love-sick, snivelling hanger-on named Will Shakespeare."
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A Murder of Crows

P.F. Chisholm

Poisoned Pen Press

2010

A Robert Carey novel.

"It's September 1592, and Sergeant Dodd is still in London with dashing courtier Sir Robert Carey. Carey urgently needs to get back to Carlisle where he is the Deputy Warden; the raiding season is about to begin. However, his powerful father, Henry, Lord Hunsdon, wants him to solve the mystery of a badly decomposed corpse that has washed up from the Thames on Her Majesty's privy steps. Meanwhile, although he hates London, Sergeant Dodd has decided not to go north until he has taken revenge for his mistreatment by the Queen's Vice Chamberlain, Thomas Heneage. Carey's father wants him to sue, but none of the lawyers in London will take the brief against such a dangerous courtier. Soon a mysterious young lawyer with a pock-marked face eagerly offers to help Dodd. And then, just as Carey is resigning himself to the delay, the one person he really does not want to see again arrives in London to stir up everything."
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An Air of Treason

P.F. Chisholm

Poisoned Pen Press

2014

A Robert Carey novel.

"In Sir Robert Carey's fifth outing, he's tasked with solving the most notorious cold case of the Elizabethan court, an investigation that may implicate the crown-or worse, his own father. The already dangerous case takes a trecherous turn when Carey is temporaily blinded and Sergeant Dodd goes missing. Robbed of his sight and most loyal companion, Carey's limits are surely tested in An Air of Treason."
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A Chorus of Innocents

P.F. Chisholm

Poisoned Pen Press

2015

A Robert Carey novel.

"Thursday, 12th October, 1592. Eighteen days after the action closes in An Air of Treason, courtier Sir Robert Carey and Carey's surly, larcenous, and loyal henchman Henry Dodd, Land Sergeant of Gilsland, are back in Carlisle and the Debateable Lands, the Border country, the Wild North, the land of the hot trod where the thieving, feuding reiver clans are 'English when it suited, and Scots at their pleasure'. A Chorus of Innocents ushers forward Lady Elizabeth Widdrington, the married woman whom Carey adores but respects. It opens when a very pregnant young woman rides to Lady Widdrington's tower crying that her minister husband has been murdered and she herself has been raped. You will meet canny King James VI, his amoral favorite Lord Spynie, the fey Lady Hume, Mr. Anricks, a surprisingly skilled tooth drawer, Young Henry Widdrington with his unfortunate spots, and all the boys in murdered Minister Burn's choir. The action proceeds full tilt for ten days and 'finishes with a marvelous set piece of derring-do."
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A Clash of Spheres

P.F. Chisholm

Poisoned Pen Press

2017

A Robert Carey novel.

"Sir Robert Carey, cousin to Queen Elizabeth from the wrong side of Henry VIII's blanket, remains at his post on the Borders at Carlisle. He has at last been confirmed by his monarch as Deputy Warden, is still deeply in love with Lady Elizabeth Widdrington while despising her elderly, abusive husband (will the man never die?). And he remains estranged from his dour but lethal henchman, Henry Dodd. Sir Robert Cecil, Privy Councillor to the Queen, warns of a new challenge: the King of Spain's 'intentions in Scotland.' Will Cecil be sending a pursuivant to the Borders to suss out, and possibly interrupt, whatever plots are in progress against England? Now it's Autumn. We meet Marguerite, an over-sexed and unhappy wife. Father Crichton, a Jesuit, formerly of Spain. A man who says his name is Jonathan Hepburn but, curiously, thinks in Deutsch. Marguerite's elderly husband Sir David, a Groom of King James' VI's Bedchamber, a jealous man. Various disloyal Scottish Earls. Janet Dodd, wife to Henry, who learns an interesting thing from Mrs. Hogg, the midwife. Hughie Tyndale, a would-be-assassin. Mr. John Napier, a philosopher and mathematician with a revolutionary theory of how the solar system works. Mr. Simon Anricks, a toothdrawer (and philosopher, too) bearing a secret letter from England, who becomes delighted with Mr. Napier. Queen Anne (of Denmark), not yet a mother. And King James, not your usual monarch, plus his court, sycophants, and (former) lover Lord Spynie, who is still plotting revenge. So many spheres of influence or disruption in play. Events come to a head at the King's court in Edinburgh where a great Disputation on the differences between the Ptolemaic and the Copernican systems, and a demonstration of the planets will be staged, a clash of spheres mirroring the same at the human level."
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A Suspicion of Silver

P.F. Chisholm

Poisoned Pen Press

2018

A Robert Carey novel.

"Sir Robert Carey leaves the court of Scotland's King James VI in early January, 1593, on the hunt for Joachim Hochstetter, aka Jonathan Hepburn. Carey, the Queen's Deputy Warden in Carlisle, is carrying a warrant for Hochstetter's arrest for plotting with the King of Spain and Scottish earls to assassinate James. Hochstetter, a skilled engineer, is a son of a family of Anabaptists from Augsburg and may have taken ship. Or he may have gone to ground at Vicar's Island, Derwentwater, where his widowed mother, Radegunda, rules the smelting business and her unruly brood. Is he a man driven by the religious politics of the period? Or is he just a stone killer? Meanwhile, what is the fate of Land Sergeant of Gilsland Henry Dodd, Sir Robert's man but currently at potentially fatal odds with him thanks to a deadly clan feud with the Grahams; of Dodd's wife the redoubtable Janet who believes she's a childless widow and about to lose her family's land – even that of Dodd's remarkable horse, Whitesock? "
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Robert Carey: Omnibus editions

Guns in the North

P.F. Chisholm

Head of Zeus

2017

A Robert Carey omnibus.

An omnibus edition that brings together the three novels: A Famine of Horses; A Season of Knives; and A Surfeit of Guns.

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Knives in the South

P.F. Chisholm

Head of Zeus

2018

A Robert Carey omnibus.

An omnibus edition that brings together the three novels: A Plague of Angels; A Murder of Crows; and An Air of Treason.

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Swords in the East

P.F. Chisholm

Head of Zeus

2018

A Robert Carey omnibus.

An omnibus edition that brings together the three novels: A Chorus of Innocents; A Clash of Spheres; and A Suspicion of Silver.

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Last updated October 2018