By Paul Carrier
It would be tempting to credit author Stephanie Merritt with creating Giordano Bruno, the protagonist of Merritt's historical thrillers in which the Italian-born former monk, excommunicated by the Catholic Church for heresy, sleuths his way through France and England in the 1580s. But Merritt, who published the addictive novels under the pen name S.J. Parris, acknowledges that her character was inspired by a real-life philosopher of the same name who was burned at the stake in 1600.
In Execution, the sixth book in the series, Merritt’s fictionalized Bruno is very much alive.
He finds himself working undercover for Queen Elizabeth’s real-life spymaster, Francis Walsingham, as they try to derail a plan by radical English Catholics and their potential Spanish allies to assassinate the Protestant queen and replace her with Mary Stuart, a Catholic who had abdicated as the queen of Scotland years earlier. Walsingham’s ultimate goal? To definitively link Mary to the plot, so he can execute her.
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