With a PhD in the bag, she then took the plunge to follow her dream of writing for a living. “I thought that everybody wanted to be a writer but I was never really committed to being an academic,” she recalls, “so I thought ‘try to be a writer, fail and you go and get on with being an academic.” An oral tradition But Rizzio has not fully understood the intricate disputational customs here. In Savonese courts a coup d’état is a hot fight, a charge and call to arms. It is not preceded by months spent drawing up legally binding contracts, negotiating the spoils, redrafting, getting their secretary to read over the proposals before they sign.

Overall, I absolutely loved Rizzio - much more than I was expecting to - and I would have happily kept reading forever if it had continued into the next part of Mary's life. The story of Mary, Queen of Scots, so often characterised as a romance, was notably violent and grim. Visitors to Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh who would like to sense the brutal reality should pay attention to a very small room off the royal bedchamber – it was here, on 9 March 1566, that David Rizzio, Mary’s private secretary and favourite, was murdered. He was stabbed 56 times. The queen, pregnant with a future king, is said to have had a pistol aimed at her belly. This, then, is a crime scene, and so it is appropriate that a crime writer should take up the tale. It’s the story of the assassination of David Rizzio, the secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots. One night, on a whim, he was murdered - not just by one person, but by a group who came together for this purpose. The story is tense, gritty, and dark. It feels like an historical crime thriller because this really happened even though all the details aren’t known. Also, Mary, Queen of Scots? She’s one of the most fascinating historical figures of which I’ve read, and I never tire of stories surrounding her life.Rizzio was considered a good musician and excellent singer, which brought him to the attention of the cosmopolitan young queen. Towards the end of 1564, having grown wealthy under her patronage, he became the queen's secretary for relations with France, after the previous occupant of the post had retired. Rizzio was ambitious, controlling access to the queen and seeing himself as almost a Secretary of State. Other courtiers felt that as a Catholic and a foreigner he was too close to the queen. [9] Relationship with Darnley and with Mary [ edit ] Denise Mina had a peripatetic childhood following the career of her father who worked in the oil industry. Her family hail from Scotland, however, and it was in their native Glasgow that she returned to settle in 1986. Rizzio's brother, Joseph, arrived in Scotland with Michel de Castelnau and was appointed secretary in David's place by 25 April 1566. Joseph and an Italian colleague, Joseph Lutyni, had some trouble over coins taken from the queen's purse, and in April 1567 he was accused and acquitted with Bothwell of Darnley's murder. [39] Legacy and memorial [ edit ] What fictionalised true crime can do … David Oluwale, who was found dead in the River Aire near Leeds in April 1969. Photograph: PA It is the first in a series from Polygon called Darkland Tales, using what they call, the best of the country’s contemporary writers.

Other Calvinists congratulate him on his passion, overlook the implied violence of his fanaticism, because he’s on their side. The Reformation is recent, the issue undecided. It’s not yet safe. Everyone is afraid of a revival of the Roman religion, of being killed for their beliefs, of spies and foreign interventions. Men as hot and spirited as Yair are useful to the Protestant movement.

Rizzio: Darkland Tales

Told from the perspective of several of the characters involved, the story focuses on a 1566 plot to kill Mary, Queen of Scots’ friend and private secretary David Rizzio. Denise captures the dramas of the sixteenth century intrigue but is glad to link to more contemporaneous themes. “There are so many resonances,” she points out. Not least that, “there is no justice that can reach you if you are rich.”