The Walsingham Gambit provides the reader with a new and unique insight into the hidden history associated with the regicide of Mary, Queen of Scots. This hidden history is revealed in great detail by R. Kent Tiernan, who describes how the English deception planners led by Sir Francis Walsingham designed, engineered, and executed a complex seven-year operation to expand Queen Elizabeth I’s power by ending Mary’s life. Tiernan presents a counterintelligence analytical approach utilizing conspiracies and deception between two religious mortal enemies. Historians have explained what happened during this tumultuous period, but this book tells how it happened. Whether interested in history or deception, the reader will be well rewarded with an enhanced understanding of both. This book is a timeless must read for anyone interested in how Mary Stuart was entrapped by Walsingham’s gambit.

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This is a complex, scrupulously researched text, with scores of players and complicating activities, but Tiernan makes it accessible to the lay reader with clear, brief chapters that follow the chronology of the “gambit” from inception to execution. Flow charts, illustrations, appendices, and copious endnotes, support the narrative, so readers can choose how deeply into the weeds to get. The book is fascinating, actually. Machiavellian, definitely. Shakespearean, nearly.