Francis Bacon is charged with investigating the murder of a fellow barrister at Gray’s Inn. He recruits his unwanted protégé Thomas Clarady to do the tiresome legwork. The son of a privateer, Clarady will do anything to climb the Elizabethan social ladder. Bacon’s powerful uncle Lord Burghley suspects Catholic conspirators of the crime, but other motives quickly emerge. Rival barristers contend … contend for the murdered man’s legal honors and wealthy clients. Highly-placed courtiers are implicated as the investigation reaches from Whitehall to the London streets. Bacon does the thinking; Clarady does the fencing. Everyone has something up his pinked and padded sleeve. Even the brilliant Francis Bacon is at a loss — and in danger — until he sees through the disguises of the season of Misrule.
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Mystery set in the 1600’s. Liked the time period aspect of the story.
Fun characters, and an entertaining look at Elizabethan England from a new perspective. Plot and dialogue was occasionally a tad forced, but I enjoyed it overall.
Kept my interest
To chatty, a lot of words with no action. Had to stop reading part way thru.
Young lawyers ,with distinct personalities and relatives, study and frolic towards completion of the year.
historical setting, very slow reading due to a multitude of terms or descriptions using word I never encountered in my life. boring–didn’t finish
GREAT BOOK KEPT IN THE ERA IT WAS WRITTEN ABOUT. USED REAL PEOPLE THAT YOU COULD BELIEVE IN. WANT TO SEE MORE BY THIS WRITER
The mystery part was okay. I did not appreciate the homosexual agenda. I do not need nor want to know the thoughts of a homosexual.
Mystery of the Impossible variety. Quite fun, even if I do find the concept of the femme fatale kind of annoying. Owen Burns is a fun detective.
A great plot line, but use of period British colloquial language made the rest my tiresome at times.
This book was interesting to read because of the historical setting. It was a little slow getting started and the culprit was easy to figure out rather early in the book.
The author did a pretty good job of character development and took painstaking effort to provide historical detail. I was unsurprised by the identity of the murderer but there were a couple of unexpected twists.
Fictionalized story about Francis Bacon as a detective. Hmmmm.
The book provided some interesting insight into late 16th century Cambridge and environs. I wondered how accurate that was, until I read the author’s historical notes at the end. There is one glaring editing flaw: it appears that the text is actually “Murder by Disputation” rather than Murder by Misrule.
Moved very slow
I had high hopes for this book. The narrator Joel Froomkin is wonderful and was the reason I continued with this audiobook. The story starts out okay but for me, it soon became over the top with descriptions of fashion and food. I will not be continuing with this series.
An exceptional period mystery!
This is the first book of a well-written mystery series. Its setting is London during the Elizabethan Era. Francis Bacon, currently banished from the Queen’s court, stumbles upon a fresh corpse that happens to be another barrister of Gray’s Inn of Court. The untimely demise tangles Francis, and subsequently the young men the victim had been tutoring, into a web of intrigue, deceit, and danger as they try to uncover the murderer. The story follows the period nicely and conveys a real sense of life during that time. Anna Castle builds the plot and directs the reader step-by-step to the conclusion with interspersed humor and a little romance. I thoroughly enjoyed the antics of Bacon’s team of sleuths and will add this series to my TBR list.
Enjoyable story line. Interesting to try relating book with vaguely remembered historical education.
In my mind, any book that can make me forget I’m on the treadmill gets my vote! And that’s what happened to me while reading Murder by Misrule. This book moves along so quickly that I lost track of time. Although the novel is about the Elizabethan Francis Bacon, who is well into his career in law but must solve a murder to get back into his uncle’s—and the queen’s—good graces, some of the secondary characters steal the show. But that’s ok; there’s enough interest to go around. Francis has the brains and cleverness to solve the mystery, but he is impatient to move on to other things and delegates the snooping around to the youngsters he is tutoring. One of them, Tom Clarady, is more than willing to chase down the lovely portraitist who presumably witnessed the original murder, but he nearly gets the poor girl killed in the process. Francis almost gets himself killed as well, which is when he decided to solve the murder, which had grown into multiple killings. It’s all very clever and sets the stage for a lively series. Mysteries are not my forté, but I had no problem sinking my teeth into this one.
*Audio Book* At first it was hard to follow, but once I was in chapter 5 I was good. I enjoyed the plot twist. Great narrator, full of energy. I am now intrigued to listen to book 2.