The Mapmaker’s Daughter by Clare Marchant: An emotional and gripping thrill ride through history and adventure – book review –

But the Spanish are threatening to invade England and the man who fought alongside the murderous soldiers of the Spanish Inquisition in Holland is now an ambassador at the court of Queen Elizabeth I… and he has his sights set firmly on Freida and her extraordinary mapmaking skills.

Clare Marchant – who thrilled readers with her first two Tudor novels, The Secrets of Saffron Hall and The Queen’s Spy – returns to one of the most exciting periods of English history for another danger-laced, time-slip adventure full of action, intrigue, romance, daring... and maps.

Proving herself to be an author with the enviable ability to bring an exciting blend of originality and authentic real history to her novels, Marchant gives centre stage to two troubled women… separated by five centuries but both linked to the complex art of cartography, and bound together by the pull of the ocean.

When her beloved sailor husband Nate went missing at sea on his racing yacht over six-and-a-half years ago, thirty-six-year-old Robyn Willoughby’s world imploded and she has never come to terms with his loss.

She gave up her job as a busy London journalist and returned to live with her widower father at his specialist shop in Hay-on-Wye, selling ancient and modern maps, atlases and globes… a place she loves and where ‘the spirits of ancient mapmakers and explorers’ still wander.

But as Nate’s body was never found and the required seven years have now almost passed, Robyn’s father is pressing her to have him officially and legally declared dead so that she can move on with the rest of her life, something she is reluctant to do as it would finally end all hope.

And then she discovers an exquisite map from the Tudor period in an old box in the shop… an expertly created map that is mysteriously ringed with a splatter of blood but whose creator is not marked on it.

When she starts to investigate the map’s provenance, Robyn has strange dreams and she finds herself caught in a centuries-old mystery, one that will send her to London and then on to Amsterdam in search of the truth, and a revelation that could hold the key to changing her life forever.

Over five hundred years earlier, in 1580, Freida Ortelius – who fled persecution in her home country of Holland to live under Protestant Queen Elizabeth in London – has married Dutch sea captain Willem van Hoorn and has a precious baby son Jacob.

Above all, she wants to keep her loved ones safe and has continued her famous family’s trade of map drawing, but it’s through her rare and skilled work that she catches the eye of the Queen who demands that Freida and Willem help with the Crown’s constant war of attrition with the Spanish King Philip.

But Freida has also come to the attention of Spanish Ambassador Bernardino Mendoza who knows of her Huguenot family’s mapmaking background and spreads an atmosphere of evil around Elizabeth’s intensely political court.

And so, despite her fears for Willem and Jacob, Freida embarks on a dangerous quest to draw an elaborate map of the south coast of England and the coast of the Low Countries… a deadly mission whose consequences will echo down the ages.

Packed with characters that leap from the page – not least the all-powerful Elizabeth, the mercurial Francis Drake and the scheming Mendoza – The Mapmaker’s Daughter is an emotional and gripping thrill ride through history and adventure.

As we journey from the menace and murder of Amsterdam in 1569 to the opulent and dangerous court of Elizabeth at Greenwich Palace, and on through hundreds of years to a speciality map shop in the quaint town of Hay-on-Wye, we witness two women struggling to find a happy berth in their different worlds.

Marchant’s fascinating research into a compelling Golden Age of discovery – one which includes science, exploration, new nautical instruments and mapmaking – threads perfectly into the fast-paced story as Freida navigates her own way through a maze of secrets and menace.

With a narrative that weaves seamlessly between past and present, a beautiful, mysterious map that sits tantalisingly behind all the action, and Marchant’s rich historical detail to bring the story to vibrant life, this is a Tudor treat you won’t want to miss.

(Avon, paperback, £8.99)