Our book today is A Prisoner in Malta by Phillip DePoy, out new from Minotaur books, the first in what I hope is a long series of adventures starring a young Christopher Marlowe.

Unlike so many actual historical characters who get pressed into service in whodunit novels – figures like Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin, or, for Pete’s sake, Jane Austen – when it comes to Marlowe, there’s at least a very good chance that he had dramatic adventures while a teenager at Cambridge University about which we know tantalizingly little. Despite his chronic absenteeism, administrators of Cambridge were strong-armed into awarding him his degree in 1587 by Queen Elizabeth I’s Privy Council, whose letter cited unspecified “good service” to the Queen – to put it mildly, not the sort of thing typically said about college students, then or now.

In this first adventure, DePoy wisely makes the same kind of decision Marlowe himself made when he started writing plays for the London stage: take no half measures. His Marlowe is a randy, handy dandy, a knife-wielding smart talker with a deceptively subtle imagination and a thinly hidden sensitive side. Bobbing in a vat underneath Universal Studios right at this minute is the slim-bodied wavy-haired dreamy teen actoroid who will be decanted, given a fake past in Plano, Texas, and cast to play this Marlowe two years from now if somebody makes the wise decision to adapt A Prisoner in Malta for Netflix.

In DePoy’s leanly-presented narrative, a threat to the life of Queen Elizabeth prompts her councillor Francis Walsingham to send her doctor Rodrigo Lopez to find and enlist Marlowe to investigate the case. Lopez is an old friend of Marlowe’s, and DePoy right off establishes a mentor-student Odd Couple banter between them:

“You give your thoughts too much tongue,” Lopez began as they walked in the direction of Old Court. “You give every man your voice when you should lend your ear.”

“You came here to tell me that I talk too much?” Marlowe threw his arm around Lopez.

“You’ve drawn too much attention to yourself,” Lopez said in a very confidential voice. “The way you dress, for example.”

“What’s wrong with the way I dress?” Marlowe asked, not quite aware of his old friend’s strange behavior.

“All black. It’s too somber for a young man,” Lopez insisted.

“This from a man in a flame-red cape,” Marlowe shook his head.

“You lend your money too freely,” Lopez went on, “and you quarrel entirely too much.”

“But I always win,” Marlowe answered impatiently.

In short order, the two are on their way to Malta to save a man and perhaps thwart a wide-ranging conspiracy, and since DePoy is a seasoned pro at this sort of thing, it’s all handled smoothly, with zippy dialogue and solid amounts of research into the Tudor era woven more or less unobtrusively into the narrative, as when our heroes are crossing London Bridge:

Well over three hundred years old, not quite a thousand feet long, the bridge’s stone construction was wide enough to accommodate the coach they were riding in, and another to pass it. Supported by nineteen arches – coincidentally the same number as members of the Privy Council – the bridge felt as solid as a mountain. Still, Marlowe, roused from his sleep, had an uncomfortable, queasy feeling as the carriage jolted over the black water of the Thames.

The events at the end of the novel are clearly intended to signal those future adventures I’m hoping for. Here’s hoping they’re not long in coming.