At the House of the Magician

From the first page of Hooper’s new novel, the reader is transported back to Elizabethan England. Lucy leaves home afraid of her drunken father and resolves to go to London and seek employment which she finds by chance when she rescues a child from the river. As a result of this rescue Lucy becomes nursemaid in the household of Dr John Dee, Elizabeth I’s court magician. John Dee dabbles in the occult and Lucy, desperate for money to give her mother who is about to be made homeless, agrees to impersonate the dead daughter of Lord Vaizey who is heartbroken over her death. When she appears, wraith-like in the churchyard, Lucy feels compelled to say more than she should and then dreams of a plot of kill Elizabeth I. Her ambition to become a lady in waiting is dashed by her lowly birth but the book ends with her becoming a spy for Sir Francis Walsingham, leading neatly to a sequel or two.

Peopled with real characters as well as fictional ones the story unfolds giving much detail of Elizabethan life. Best of all, Hooper has made the words sound Elizabethan without a ‘Prithee’ or ‘Forsooth’. Just by re-arranging the words and the rhythm of speech she makes the text come alive for the reader.