Elizabethan Noir Trilogy: Firedrake’s Eye, Unicorn’s Blood, Gloriana’s Torch box set

The 16th century is a hard and magnificent era to be born into, full of violence, squalor, forbidden love and rare glimmers of kindness.

David Becket is a large ugly sword-master with a dark past; Simon Ames is a scrawny code breaker for Walsingham, the Elizabethan M – and a Jew. They meet when Ames is attacked in an alley in Whitefriars, London, and Becket bails him out. Later Ames will return the favour.