Crime writer says her conclusion into the circumstances of the 16th-century playwright’s killing ‘will surprise people’
It has all the makings of a classic Val McDermid mystery: a sudden death, a cast of shadowy figures and a tangle of motives buried beneath layers of official secrecy.
But this time, the queen of crime is not inventing a murder, she is revisiting one of history’s most enduring whodunnits – the mysterious death of Christopher Marlowe.
In her new play, And Midnight Never Come, McDermid explores the controversial circumstances around the death of the brilliant and subversive Elizabethan playwright who was stabbed to death in a Deptford tavern at the age of 29. Officially, Marlowe was killed over a row about a bill. Unofficially? Espionage, heresy and a state-sanctioned cover-up are all in the frame.
“This play has been a long time in the making, I started thinking about it more than 40 years ago,” McDermid said. “Over the years, I think I’ve read pretty much everything that’s been written about Marlowe.
