Set between 1580 and 1582, The Locksmith's Daughter opens with Mallory Bright returning home to London. Two years earlier, she abandoned her fiancé to elope with Sir Raffe Shelton, whose promises were lies and who caused Mallory's greatest heartbreak. Now a shell of her previous self, she is scorned by nearly all, except her locksmith father--who taught her how to crack the most intricate of locks--and the mysterious Lord Nathaniel.
To restore his daughter's good standing, Gideon Bright enlists help from his friend, Sir Francis Walsingham. As Queen Elizabeth's spymaster, Sir Francis views Mallory's intelligence and lock-picking abilities as key assets to his mission to eradicate Catholicism throughout England.
Karen Brooks (The Brewer's Tale) brilliantly ensnares both reader and Mallory in an elaborate web of suspicion, trickery and deceit. With extensive research, Brooks marries fictional and real-life characters and actual events, such as religious persecutions. ("Were they not Londoners before they were Catholics? Or did their faith make them something so strange, so different, they were no longer recognizable as English? As humans? I saw no traitors plotting to bring down a queen, only desperate people; people whose world was in disarray and who felt threatened. Who prayed to the same God, only differently.")
Mallory's emotional growth happens while she's wrestling with questions of loyalty and love. Unable to resist the romantic attraction between herself and Lord Nathaniel but fearful of being hurt again, Mallory is protecting more than her country. The hardest lock to open is the one around her heart and only she holds the key. --Melissa Firman