Books by Guy Jenkin
“This book is set in a period of history that has been very well worked. It’s about the murder of Christopher Marlowe. William Shakespeare is one of his main characters, and with Marlowe’s sister, they become a sort of detective duo, because they are not convinced by the official explanation for why Marlowe was stabbed in the eye in Deptford. There’s an on-off romance between them as well. What’s entertaining about this one is that he doesn’t attempt in any way to make it sound historical, although he’s clearly done the background research. It’s all written in very contemporary dialogue, and they are presented as characters that we might recognise, that you might run into in the pub. The comedy is found in that—how these people become heroes in a comic detective fiction.” Read more...
Stephanie Merritt, Journalist
Interviews where books by Guy Jenkin were recommended
The Funniest Books of 2025, recommended by Stephanie Merritt
Every year, the judges of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction draw up a shortlist of books that made them laugh out loud. We asked the novelist Stephanie Merritt, one of the 2025 judges, to talk us through the eight books in the running for the title of the funniest book of the year.
