Called in to solve an inconvenient murder before the whores riot, the lawyer James Enys must find a serial killer hiding among the cutpurses, lawyers, players, fugitive priests, pursuivants and whores of Elizabethan London. If he fails, he'll be charged with the crime himself. The mob just wants a murderer, after all, and he's as likely to have done it as any man. But James Enys isn't the man they think he is. Aided by a certain bald young playwright (with a sonnet to write) who knows his secret, the lawyer finds that he must follow the trail of evidence into the closed world of Elizabethan women, where no man could venture. Only a woman would be welcome here. It is fortunate indeed that Mr Enys has a sister. She is as intelligent as he is, and resembles him in both appearance and manner. Except, of course, that she is a woman, which in Elizabethan times, means that her opportunities are restricted. In fact, James Enys' sister is never seen in public at the same time as he is - but only Shakespeare has guessed the truth about the quiet, determined, ambitious young lawyer with a knack of seeing beneath the surface. Patricia Finney has written more than twenty novels, many of them set in Elizabethan England. This is the first of the James Enys mysteries, and the next will be coming soon from Climbing Tree Books.

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.