Watch the Lady: Elizabeth Fremantle

So what is it that makes the Tudor period so endlessly fascinating to writers? Well... passion, treachery, adventure, a turbulent political climate, beautiful (albeit probably uncomfortable) clothes, larger-than-life characters, royalty, Shakespeare... Hm. Yes, it does seem to have one or two things going for it - and Elizabeth Fremantle's new book taps into most of them.

But above all, it has two fascinating characters at its heart - as well as a number of others on the periphery. The 'lady' of the title is Lady Penelope Devereux, the sister of one of Elizabeth's favourites - the Earl of Essex - and the stepdaughter of another, the Earl of Leicester. The title comes from a piece of advice given by Lord Burghley, Elizabeth's trusted adviser, to his son, Robert Cecil, who is the other viewpoint character in the book. Burghley and Cecil are both aware that Penelope is not only beautiful; she is also highly intelligent, politically astute, and the driving force of her flamboyant

family. Burghley sees her ability and advises his son to watch her. Cecil sees her ability too, but he's also very aware of her beauty. There's poignancy here, because Cecil is crooked, not beautiful at all. The first time he sees her, she smiles at him - a smile that 'would light up the shadows of hell'. Usually, girls look at him with 'disgust'. As a result, though he will always be an enemy of her brother, his feelings for her are ambivalent - and in the end, this helps her to survive in the dangerous world of Tudor politics.

Penelope is a passionate character. When she is very young, she falls in love with Sir Philip Sidney, the perfect knight: brave, loyal, chivalrous, learned. He falls for her too, but her marriage is a matter of political and economic expedience; she is obliged by her family to wed Lord Richard Rich - they need his wealth, and he needs their ancient lineage. The marriage is not a success, but Penelope is a pragmatist and she makes the best of it - and finds that she is able to turn the situation to her advantage: she takes charge.

Her brother, handsome, charming, ambitious, becomes to the Queen the son she has never had. But along with all his good qualities, Essex is also headstrong and erratic; he suffers from mood swings which leave him sometimes plunged into despair and sometimes dangerously out of control. Penelope is the rock of her family; her mother, who lost the Queen's favour when she married Leicester, is foolish, and her sister wants a quiet life, away from the temptations and dangers of court. It is up to Penelope to improve the fortunes of the Devereux clan - but she also wants personal fulfillment; she wants love.

Elizabeth Fremantle weaves a richly coloured tale of Elizabeth's court. Naturally, as a novelist she takes leave to use poetic license - in Richard Rich's proclivities, for example, but also in a delightful scene where she imagines how Shakespeare might have come to compose his famous sonnet: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun... She reveals the complex machinations and manouevring for place and power, and she shows how Tudor realpolitik is merciless in its sacrifice of the innocent - I could hardly bear to read about the fate of a certain character, whose name I won't reveal. It's always interesting to see how novelists deal with characters who have become well-known to us through other novels and history books; Penelope Devereux is not widely known, but many of the others are very familiar. Elizabeth herself  emerges, at this later stage of her life, as an unlikeable but also rather pitiable figure: Cecil evokes pity and revulsion in roughly equal measure.

But the heart of the novel is the character of Penelope - warm, clever, courageous and loyal. It's a delight to keep her company as she plunges into the intrigues of Elizabeth's court, and yet somehow manages to retain her integrity throughout.

Marbeck and the Gunpowder Plot, by John Pilkington

Before he took to writing novels, John Pilkington wrote television scripts and plays for radio and theatre. Clearly, he has used the skills he learnt there in creating his historical thrillers: they are tightly plotted and full of reversals and surprises, with cliffhangers which are - literally, in the case of some of the characters - to die for!

It's obvious from the title of this novel (the fourth in the Marbeck series) that it features the famous gunpowder plot. Yet it's a tribute to Pilkington's writing that the outcome does not feel at all obvious; there is no loss of tension as you follow Marbeck's investigation. For Marbeck is an 'intelligencer' - a seventeenth century spy. His immediate master is called Monk, but he ultimately answers to Robert Cecil, spymaster first for Elizabeth and then for her successor, James. Marbeck discovers that there is a threat from Catholic insurgents, but he doesn't know what it is. He receives hints and clues from various sources, and it's a dangerous game piecing the story together and finding out who he can trust; the answer to that last question, of course, as in any good thriller, is very far from obvious.

The Tudor and early Stuart periods are so popular with writers that their significant movers and shakers have become familiar figures. Marbeck's world reminded me a little of that of C J Sansom's investigator, the lawyer Matthew Shardlake - the two are very different characters, but they operate in similar territories, though Shardlake is from the time of Henry V111. Cecil is a significant character in Watch the Lady, Elizabeth Fremantle's recently published novel, and he and his father appear in Philippa Gregory's novels about the Tradescants, Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth. And of course, the Tudor court and its dangerous politics are the subject of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.

So the murky world in which Marbeck operates is a familiar one. It's certainly familiar to Pilkington; he re-creates each setting with great assurance. He seems to know early Stuart London better than most people would know the London of today - but more than that, he knows the detail of everyday life: little details, such as that 'muscadine' and 'alicante' were among the tipples of the time. And he can paint a vivid picture for us of what the hiding place of a Catholic priest would have looked and smelled like, of the vaults underneath Parliament, or of the seedy back streets and lodging houses.

Unlike the rather fragile Shardlake, with his crooked back, Marbeck is physically tough. He's a skilled and ruthless fighter, and the body count rises as he pursues his investigations. But he has his areas of vulnerability too: in particular, there is his love for Meriel. The story of this is obviously carried over from previous books, and I'm not sure what the obstacles to it were: in this book, she tries to put him off, but it's clear to the reader that they love each other. He is convinced that he's lost her, but by the end, it seems that there may be hope. But nothing is resolved: the ending is a triumphant cliff-hanger, and the book is a gripping read.