Frank Viviano

Well written and plotted, albeit in slightly hammy imitation of John le Carré's distinctive literary voice, this is an espionage page-turner with a clever thesis. Mahmoud Ezzedine, a Turkish physician, "gifted" by the dying Queen Elizabeth I's spymasters to the court of her likely successor, King James VI of Scotland, is actually himself a double agent. Sent to England by the Ottoman sultan with a diplomatic delegation, he has been tricked into remaining behind as a spy for the Turks. A decade later and still in Britain, he is tricked once again into serving as an intelligence agent, this time on behalf of protestant officials in London who suspect that James is secretly a devout Catholic planning to reassert the Vatican's primacy. The story line is engaging, if implausible, and Phillips's grasp of Tudor politics is solid. Alas, the same cannot be said for his understanding of the Ottoman Empire, which is vital to the conceit that anchors his narrative. Its history, power and relentless effort to dominate the Mediterranean -- stifled with the victory of Spanish-led naval forces in the Battle of Lepanto midway through Elizabeth's reign -- is almost entirely ignored, even though it pitted the Turks against the same enemy that dispatched the Armada to Britain in 1588, an event of far less historical significance. Equally surprising is the author's lack of attention to his protagonist's cultural background. Mahmoud Ezzedene's principal language in exchanges with diplomatic colleagues, and even in private thought, is always presented as Arabic, which he teaches to a notable Tudor physician. Put quite simply, even in the higher ranks of court and diplomatic life Ottoman Turks spoke Turkish, which is linguistically unrelated to Arabic. In the arts, especially poetry, Persian words and styles were sometimes employed. Arabic, as the original language of the Koran, was studied by clerics and religious scholars, and Arabic words were also added to the vocabulary. But Turkish was the official language of the empire, and remains the official language of the Turkish republic today.