I will admit, I wasn't sure what I would find in this book, but I was totally in it for an Elizabethan period book.

Kit Marlowe has always been living life by skin of his teeth. What he didn't expect was to approach by the Queen's spy master himself while attending Cambridge. So extends his life into a world he only thought he understood, with horrors that will haunt his sleep and keep his pen busy for many years to come.

It did take me a minute. I was very much expecting considering that there was some revisionist history here that I would really dislike this. I can tend to be very much a purist. One of the things I should have remembered though is that this time period was rife with so much intrigue that makes it easy to slip in one person for another, to change time periods here and there. It weaves such a lovely tangled web.

I think the only part of this book that I felt some unease with is that Tom and Kit's story felt unfinished. I felt like Kit treated him so poorly and left in him in a bit of a shambles. I know Kit was kind of dealt the hand he was, but out of everyone in his life, Tom deserved better.

Beyond this, I LOVED the story Epstein built. The history, interweaving Kit into the Babington plot. It was all fascinating to me. I want more. I am a greedy historical fiction reader I suppose. Sorry, not sorry.

Thank you, thank you for the arc!

This was an odd one for me. The setting and characters are Extremely My Jam but something about the story didn’t quite click. The pacing was slow, especially in the first two thirds of the book, and I was expecting a lot more time spent on the Babington Plot, Marlowe working with Mary Q of Scots and Walsingham as a mentor to Marlowe. Then when we make it to London, Marlowe’s theater life and work are very much in the background of the plot and never really connect with the larger story until it’s needed for some dramatic irony at the very end. I did enjoy the characterization of Marlowe, his relationships with his family and with Tom. The writing itself is strong, despite my issues with the plotting, and the historical details of Marlowes life are well researched and engaging.

Christopher Marlowe is probably best known for being a contemporary of Shakespeare, for dying in a bar brawl, and for writing controversial plays such as Doctor Faustus, and, in some circles, probably in that order. A Tip for the Hangman sheds light on other elements of his life, including his rise from the poor son of an indebted cobbler to a poet who was the toast of London; his career in espionage for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I; and his long relationship with solicitor Tom Watson. Yes, this is definitely historical fiction — Epstein makes no bones about messing with timelines or boosting Marlowe's importance to the spymaster — but it's so interesting and compelling that it makes me want to learn more about Kit Marlowe. An excellent book, and highly recommended.

3.5/5 stars: A Tip for the Hangman was an enjoyable and immersive trip in time back to Elizabethan England, where political intrigue and games of thrones are the lifeblood of the land. Cambridge graduate student Kit Marlowe is as unexpected choice for a spy as you can get, but when he's approached by Queen Elizabeth's spymaster, he finds himself caught up in dangerous plots, rivalries between queens, and the specter of the hangman always hanging over him. With major historical actors such as Mary Stuart, Francis Walsingham, and Robert Cecil all making appearances, Kit must juggle the weight of his duty to his queen with his duty to the people he loves, but failing to do so may just result in more death and blood on his hands. I really enjoyed ATFTH a lot for its Shakespearean feel, it's high stakes espionage, and for the way that Epstein brings one of my absolute favorite time periods to life. I have a major interest in Mary Queen of Scots and I loved seeing her brought to life in this novel in particular. I love all of the intrigue and betrayal and high-stakes espionage in this story.. I thought the plotting pretty good and the moral greyness needed for all of these characters to get where their stories needed them to go. My only wish was that we could have seen Queen Elizabeth on the page. She's clearly a central figure in this book and I could feel her absence on the page itself. But A Tip for the Hangman is all about what is forbidden, whether it be love or treason, and the cost they have on ourselves and on others.

From Historical Novel Review
HNR Issue 95 (February 2021)
A Tip for the Hangman
WRITTEN BY ALLISON EPSTEIN
REVIEW BY SUSAN LOWELL

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) is the Jimi Hendrix of great playwrights.

Marlowe’s meteoric career fizzled mysteriously 427 years ago. Just a few brilliant plays and poems and a few scandalous (but largely unverified) bits of biography survived him. Was he a spy? A scholar? A ruffian? A child molester? A Catholic? An atheist? A counterfeiter, or merely an alchemist? Was he Shakespeare?

That last suggestion is chronologically impossible, but Marlowe definitely invented blank verse and also bequeathed to his writer-successors a lurid treasure trove of biographical rumors, which has recently inspired Allison Epstein’s thrilling and romantic debut novel, A Tip for the Hangman. Reportedly pitched to editors as “Shakespeare in Love meets Sarah Waters,” this entertaining story presents Marlowe—under his nickname, Kit—mainly as a conflicted Elizabethan double agent, while largely downplaying his writing life. A man alone in a room with his quill is not very dramatic, of course.

Epstein successfully evokes both the beauty and the brutality of 16th-century England, which is dirty and smells bad. Hangings and beheadings abound, though the precise meaning of the novel’s title is never explained. Whatever else Marlowe was or wasn’t, Elizabethan court records strongly imply that he was a bar-room brawler and a risk-taker. The exciting plot sweeps the reader from Cambridge University to the Palace of Whitehall to Newgate Prison.

Epstein is at her best with settings and secondary characters such as Mary Queen of Scots, Sir Francis Walsingham (Elizabeth I’s spymaster), and Marlowe’s longtime, long-suffering lover, Tom. But Kit himself, maybe inevitably, remains enigmatic. Did he resemble Shakespeare’s Mercutio? Or his own daredevil Doctor Faustus, or thuggish Tamberlaine?

Perhaps all we really need to know is that his work still dazzles and he died too young.

Christopher "Kit" Marlowe is known both for his plays and for his untimely death at the age of only 29, purportedly after a disagreement over a bill at a tavern. In A Tip for the Hangman, Allison Epstein looks at the tumultuous events that were happening during Marlowe's life, and offers up a different motivation for his death.
Kit was a student at Cambridge University when the story opens in October 1585. The son of a poor and frequently drunken shoemaker in Canterbury, Marlowe was given a scholarship to study at the university, a fact which made both him and his professors feel he is unworthy to be in such exalted surroundings. It comes as something of a shock when Sir Frances Walsingham, the Royal Secretary to Queen Elizabeth I, comes to Cambridge to recruit Kit to be a spy. Catholic sympathizers are plotting to overthrow the queen and install their own favorite, Mary Queen of Scots, on the throne. Walsingham wants Kit to pose as a servant and gather as much information as possible about any potential threats to the crown.

After this assignment, Kit moves to London and becomes a celebrated playwright until, due to his previous work and his talent at breaking coded messages, he's called upon for another mission 5 years later. Unfortunately, his champion and protector, Walsingham, is not exactly the picture of health . . .

To make matters worse, Kit is romantically involved with Tom, a fellow student from Cambridge, who isn't too happy about Kit's spying activities. Kit also has a never ending series of conflicts with various family members who aren't at all impressed by his fame as London's leading playwright. Kit gets involved in some double-dealings which also put him in danger from both sides of the political divide.

I enjoyed the time period and all of the details of the story that put the reader back in Elizabethan times. All of the political wheeling and dealing and double-crossing is somehow very familiar to a modern reader! I didn't always enjoy Kit's spying activities, which seemed to involve everyone taking him at his word, even when he'd been involved in some pretty suspicious activities that would have likely caused some questions among those he was spying on. Still, it is good to have Kit Marlowe brought to life in this adventurous book.

I found the book to be delightfully entertaining. The characters were a lot of fun and the story kept me coming back,

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” Whoops. Wrong book. Right concept, but very much the wrong book. Much too early.

Elizabethan England only seems like a Golden Age because we’re looking back at it. Because history is written by the victors, and in this case the victor was Elizabeth Tudor, Gloriana herself.


Anonymous 16th century portrait, believed to be Christopher Marlowe
What history glosses over are the dirty deeds done, whether or not they are dirt cheap, by unscrupulous men in dark places who pretend they are working for the good of their country – even if they are just out for the main chance.

Christopher Marlowe, often referred to as Kit, was a comet blazing across the English stage just as William Shakespeare was getting his start. It’s even possible, although unlikely, that Marlowe actually was Shakespeare. He’s got the credentials for it and the timing is possible.

On the condition that Marlowe faked his own rather suspicious death in a barroom brawl. We’ll probably never know.

But this book, this story wrapped around not one but several tips for any number of hangmen, leads the reader – and Kit Marlowe – to that suspicious barroom brawl by a road that is surprising, circuitous and shrouded in secrets. The kind of secrets that brought one queen to her end and saved another’s kingdom.

Escape Rating A+: A Tip for the Hangman is the best kind of historical fiction, the kind where the reader feels the dirt under their fingernails, the grit under their own feet – and the smells in their own nostrils.

It’s also the kind that immerses the reader in the era it portrays. We’re right there with Marlowe, a poor scholarship student at Cambridge, as he becomes Doctor Faustus to his own personal Mephistopheles a decade before he wrote his most enduring play.


Depiction of Sir Francis Walsingham, principal secretary to Elizabeth I, Queen of England.
It’s hard to get past that image, even though we only see it in retrospect, as the Queen’s Spymaster and Secretary of State, Francis Walsingham, recruits the young, impoverished and most importantly clever Marlowe into his network of agents and informants with one aim in mind.

To bring down Elizabeth’s great rival, Mary, Queen of Scots.

A recruitment which ultimately becomes Mary’s end. But eventually also Marlowe’s as well.

Marlowe spends the entire book dancing on the edge of a knife, trying to forget that he’ll be cut no matter which way he falls and ignoring the forces around him, along with his own increasing world-weariness, that guarantee he will fall sooner or later.

There’s something about this period, the Tudor and Stuart era of English history, that has always captivated me. This book does a fantastic job of drawing the reader into the cut and thrust not of politics so much as the skullduggery that lies underneath it.

As I was reading A Tip for the Hangman, my mind dragged up two series that I loved that feature the same period and have many characters that overlap this book. Elizabeth Bear’s Promethean Age puts an urban fantasy/portal twist on this period and includes both Marlowe and Shakespeare as featured characters, while Dorothy Dunnett’s marvelous Lymond series focuses on a character who spies on many of the same people that Marlowe does here, most notably Mary, Queen of Scots. Lymond’s frequent second, third and fourth thoughts about the life he has fallen into echo Marlowe in the depths of regret and even despair.

A Tip for the Hangman is a fantastic book for those looking for their history and historical fiction to be “warts and all” – to immerse the reader in life as it was lived and not just the deeds and doings of the high and mighty. Because when it comes to conveying a more nuanced version of life as a hard-scrabbling playwright living hand to mouth and fearing that the hand would get cut off this feels like an absorbing story of fiction being the lie that tells, if not THE absolute truth then absolutely a certain kind of truth.

I would also say, “Read it and weep” for Kit Marlowe and what he might have been if he’d lived. Instead, I’ll just say “READ IT!”

"The people want to believe their anger is worth something."

Kit Marlowe is almost finished with his studies at Cambridge when Queen Elizabeth I's spymaster enters his life, and turns Kit's world on its head. Kit goes undercover to try to learn more about Mary Stuart's plot to take the throne. Many years later, a successful playwright, he thinks that life is behind him, but he soon is drawn back in to playing the dangerous game of espionage.

Right off the bat, I enjoyed how Epstein used more contemporary language and dialogue in this historical setting. The time period also made for some fun, since it's not the typical eras you get for historical fiction. Kit was a super scrappy and determined person, albeit one who often made ill-advised decisions. What didn't work for me as much, was that the pacing felt a bit slow, especially since it had been billed more as a historical "thriller"; Kit's spy stints were interesting, especially in the historical context, but I didn't really find myself as invested in the characters and stakes as I would have liked.

I'd recommend this for those interested in a book set in this time period, but not someone looking for a super fast-paced thriller.

Thanks to the publisher for the gifted copy!

The perfect combination of mystery and history, this book takes us into the dramatic and intriguing world of Christopher "Kit" Marlowe, as he is pulled into a dangerous mission in the service of Queen Elizabeth. Kit is a scholarship student at university who is living in poverty, so when he is approached by one of the Queen's spymasters with an offer to become a spy for the Crown, he immediately accepts. Multi-dimensional characters and exciting adventures make this a very engaging read.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for honest feedback.

I absolutely loved this book. There is no doubt that it was right up my alley and I was so excited to get the acceptance email for this one. First off, the cover is brilliant. I want to own this book in hardback and it is hard for me to get really excited about cover-buys, but this one is great. The summary is also really, really well-written in that it is enticing and does a really good job of pulling together the plot without spoiling everything.

Aside from the major strength of the cover, I believe that the author has done a really great job with building a unique, entertaining, and historically-rich story that I would recommend to just about anyone who likes to read. It's really a great book!

Just as delightfully atmospheric and far more fun than I had anticipated.

Much of Kit Marlowe’s life and the circumstances of his death have been lost to history. Allison Epstein gives us a novelized version of one possible theory here, and it doesn’t disappoint.

There’s good support for the postulation that’s Marlowe was a spy for the Crown, and Epstein brings that to being expertly in A Tip for the Hangman, using a combination of historical fact and research-supported theory to offer one possible story of Marlowe’s intriguing life and even more intriguing untimely death.

Given his early and unnatural demise, the ending of the book is a sad one. Epstein has written an effervescent, funny, and charming Marlowe, and though we know going in that his story doesn’t end happily, it’s still a bit wrenching to read.

That said, most of the book boasts a spirit of adventuresome fun rather than impending tragedy, and though Marlowe’s life of espionage keeps him in a perpetual Under the Sword of Damocles like existence, Epstein deftly keeps the tone light and enjoyable while still conveying a sense of urgency and danger.

As I always do with Historical Fiction, I’ll grade the author’s note at the end. This one gets an A.

Thoroughly impressed with this book! As a theater nerd, I knew Christopher Marlowe's work but had no idea about his life. Boy was this novel illuminating! Allison Epstein has written a well-researched atmospheric historical fiction book that fully immerses the reader in its storytelling from the classrooms of Cambridge to the raucous back alley pubs of London. I highly recommend this novel to fans of historical fiction, English monarchy, spies (!), and theater history. I received a digital ARC from NetGalley, and, again, highly recommend.

I found this book to be throughly enjoyable! I appreciated that Epstein clearly did her research and included notes at the beginning noting major historical changes and why they were changed. I was enchanted by her portrayal of the characters and was hooked on the story from the start! It is a fun romp of a book that I recommend for fans of historical fiction, Elizabethan England, and intrigue!

DNF at 20%. Sadly, the writing style isn't for me at all and I am having difficulty engaging to the story. YMMV.

What a delight! A Tip for the Hangman has so much to savor: history, religion, intrigue, love, politics, humor, mystery, and more. Epstein weaves an imaginative and compelling tale based in history but high on fiction. The main character, Christopher “Kit” Marlowe, is a student at Cambridge when he’s offered the opportunity to play spy in the house of Mary, Queen of Scots. He says yes, and the story explodes from there. The plotline was what first drew me in, but once I got into the story, Kit held me there. Epstein is a master at writing a fully fleshed historical character who leaps from the page. I appreciated every moment of this fast-paced story. I’m looking forward to reading more from Epstein!

I enjoyed A Tip for the Hangman, as I'm a huge Marlowe fan and I thought Allison Epstein clearly did her research and did a great job of bringing the period, and Marlowe's life, into focus while weaving a good read. I couldn’t help but compare it to, imo, the definitive book on Marlowe, Charles Nicholl's nonfiction classic, The Reckoning. Marlowe's history is full and strange with so many unanswered questions, and A Tip for the Hangman is a great read for anyone interested in late Elizabethan England and a fantastic introduction to the strange and wondrous life of Christopher Marlowe.

Epstein delivers an interesting read about the espionage career of the Elizabethan playwrite and poet Christopher Marlowe. I enjoyed this one, but found it hard to completely overcome the modern turns of phrase used by the characters throughout the book. That is probably a personal preference, and it would be impossible to render a novel in perfect Elizabethan-era speech, but I did find it jarring at times. The journey of a spy from in over his head, to horror at the outcomes, to enjoyment of the work, to guilt at his enjoyment is a familiar one. The emotional beats between Kit and Tom are the highlight of the book.

This is such a great book! I fell in love with Kit from the first page. Allison Epstein’s writing sparkles, and the twists and turns of Kit’s life are entertaining, if harrowing. I so wished this could be *alternate* history!

“Kit wrote death to purge it from his mind; London watched death for the theater of it. They’d revel in real death like poetry, and when they left, life would wash the blood from them like rain, and they would return to their work, to peace.”

Thank you to Doubleday Books for sending me this arc in exchange for an honest review!

Have you ever thought to yourself that historical fiction needs more queer spy playwrights? Because, oh man, do I have the book for you!

A Tip for the Hangman follows Christopher “Kit” Marlowe from his days at Cambridge through the rest of his life while he not only works to become famous for his plays, but also helps thwart the Catholic uprisings against the Crown. We follow Kit as h goes through taverns, theatres, meeting with the most powerful men in England and the disgraced Queen of Scotland.

This book is *excellent*. Kit comes to life from the first page and I loved him. Witty, reckless, arrogant, Kit is everything we want in our Elizabethan heroes and reluctant spies. The plot is full of betrayal, moral ambiguity, treason, bloodlust. All the while bringing these historical figures to life through not only their interactions with him, but also with glimpses into their thoughts and motivations.

The story is compelling, fast paced, with enough tension strung throughout to keep the reader turning pages until the end. Every time I had to set down the book I did so reluctantly while constantly looking forward to being able to dive back into Kit’s life. I appreciated the modern writing that made it easy to keep up with Kit’s adventures even during the events where I didn’t have much previous knowledge.


SMALL SPOILERS
The last couple chapters mixing with the last few scenes of Doctor Faustus? Amazing. The scene cuts like that are one of my favorite types of raising tension and I thought this part was so well done in A Tip for the Hangman.