Longlisted, 2018 International DUBLIN Literary Award
Long-shortlisted, 2017 ReLit Awards

"Complex, lyrical, and with a profound sense of a world long passed and humanity’s eternal motivations." — Quill & Quire

"In Butler Hallett’s hands, Kit comes off as a fascinating and contradictory figure, part martyred freethinker and part unscrupulous opportunist." — Winnipeg Review

"Perfectly paced and gracefully wrought." — Toronto Star

1593. Queen Elizabeth still reigns but grows old. Two rival spymasters — Sir Robert Cecil and the Earl of Essex — plot from the shadows. Their goal: to control succession upon the aged queen’s death. The man on which their schemes depend: Christopher Marlowe ("Kit" to his friends), a cobbler’s son from Canterbury who has defied expectations and become an accomplished poet and playwright.

And spy.

As the novel opens, Kit Marlowe, fresh from betraying the target of his espionage, is himself betrayed. Fighting to stay one step ahead in a dizzying game that threatens the lives of those he holds most dear, including his beloved Tom Kyd, he comes to question his allegiances and nearly everything he once believed.

In this psychological thriller, Michelle Butler Hallett fleshes out the historical record with insight and the rigor of authenticity. Her 16th-century England, surprising and fresh, offers historical figures both famous and obscure, casual descriptions of quotidian life, and vivid representations of cruelty and violence that reverberate with echoes of our own time.

But it’s Kit, the fascinating Marlowe, an endless source of brilliance, passion and defiance, that brings the novel to life. Writes playwright Robert Chafe, "History’s Marlowe becomes [Butler Hallet’s] own, offering us his wit and wisdom and seemingly new lessons about faith, ambition, loyalty, and yes, love."

One of Canada’s most courageous and original literary voices, Michelle Butler Hallett was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Her work, at once striking, memorable and difficult to categorize, has been praised by Books in Canada for “economy and power,” while The Globe and Mail notes that “demons are at work – the kind that lurk in the subconscious and surface, depending on the individual, as either despairing visions or acts of outright brutality.” Butler Hallett is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Deluded Your Sailors, Sky Waves, and Double-blind, shortlisted for the Sunburst Award. She is also the author of the short-story collection The shadow side of grace. Her stories appear in the anthologies Hard Ol’ Spot, The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction, Running the Whale’s Back, and Best American Mystery Stories 2014. Her latest novel, This Marlowe, was published in 2016. She resides in St. John’s.

Michelle Butler Hallett's profile page

• Long-listed, International DUBLIN Literary Award
• Short-listed, ReLit Awards

"There's the real rigour of authenticity here, the tone and nuance of a time and place skilfully conjured. Butler Hallett's great gift to us, though, is her ability to chart these waters in ways that are still surprising and fresh. History's Marlowe becomes her own, offering us his wit and wisdom and seemingly new lessons about faith, ambition, loyalty, and yes, love."

Robert Chaff

"Michelle Butler Hallett angles a glass onto a four-centuries-old tragedy and haunts us with our own reflection. This Marlowe is lyrical, audacious, and achingly human: a psychological thriller and a meditation upon power, faith, loyalty, and betrayal — and the capacity of love to ruin and redeem. I loved it."

Ian Weir

"Perfectly paced and gracefully wrought, This Marlowe is superior historical fare."

<i>The Toronto Star</i>

"This daring genre hybrid explores the dark realities of Elizabethan England, while throwing some refracted light onto our own turbulent time."

<i>The Winnipeg Review</i>

"Butler Hallett builds upon a strong, believable foundation, giving the reader a vibrant sense of the times."

<i>Atlantic Books Today</i>

"Complex, lyrical, and with a profound sense of a world long passed and humanity's eternal motivations, This Marlowe holds up extremely well next to the most lauded recent historical fiction."

<i>Quill & Quire</i>