Queen & Country

1587. After three long years, exiled from home and family, and drawn into the depths of the London underworld under the tutelage of Elizabeth I's spymaster Francis Walsingham, Hew returns to Scotland with his new English wife, Frances. The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots has unleashed a torrent of anti-English sentiment in the Scottish people and fear in King James VI, jeopardising Hew's now unlawful marriage. However, the king invites Hew to investigate the perplexing meaning of a death's head painting that has come into his possession. What does it symbolise, and is it a message from his dead mother? Are the local painters all that they appear? If Hew solves the mystery, his marriage to Frances will be blessed. The stakes have never been higher as he embarks on a quest for love and life. Queen & Country is the fifth Hew Cullan Mystery by Shirley McKay.

Shirley McKay was born in Tynemouth but now lives with her family in Fife. At the age of fifteen she won the Young Observer playwriting competition, her play being performed at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs. She went on to study English and Linguistics at the University of St Andrews before attending Durham University for postgraduate study in Romantic and Seventeenth-Century prose. She was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger. Shirley works as a freelance proofreader.