Priced above Rubies

Kidnapped, beaten up and ordered by the criminal King of London to find the Three Sisters, rubies that are said to protect their holder against the plague that is sweeping the city, James Enys must brave the plague itself, violence, the attentions of a religious maniac and a lustful playwright, murder and the constant threat that his double life will be discovered. What do you tell a whore who wonders why your cheeks are so smooth? How do you keep up the appearance of a Man at Law, if you can't buy new clothes because a tailor would guess the truth immediately? And how, in Elizabethan London, where every meeting involves the drinking of ale by the quart, do you keep your fellow lawyers from realising that you are not the man they think you are?
James Enys and his sister Portia are never seen together. Through the stinking and dangerous, disease-infested streets of Elizabethan London, they navigate the world of men and the separate and secretive world of women to find the truth behind the theft of the Three Sisters, the murder of young Betty Hughes, and a traitorous plot to deprive the ageing Queen of her throne. Patricia Finney's Priced above Rubies is the second of the James Enys mysteries. The first, Do We Not Bleed? is also available on Kindle from Climbing Tree Books.


Genre: Historical Mystery