This is a story of the Elizabethan underworld. It is a full-length investigation of the killing, tracing Marlowe's shadowy political dealings, his involvement in covert intelligence work, the charges of heresy and homosexuality against him. Critical new evidence is uncovered about his three companions on that last day in Deptford. Through Charles Nicholl's detailed research, a complex, unsettling story of entrapment and betrayal, chimerical plots and dirty tricks emerges. The author has written two travel books, The Fruit Palace and Borderlines; a study of Elizabethan alchemy, The Chemical Theatre and a biography of the pampleteer Thomas Nashe, A Cup of News.