This is the twenty-first book in the Ursula Stannard series of Elizabethan mysteries. The Spanish Armada has been defeated, and subsequent events feel like an anti climax - in the first half of the book, the most drama seems to come from a young lady, Arabella Mercer, being brutally forced by her widowed mother to marry a local landowner Sylvester Waters. Distasteful for sure, but not a national threat. However, it soon turns out that the families concerned are mixed up in much more serious events involving a range of crimes including piracy, theft and murder. Arabella has been in love with and, though ignorant of the fact, pregnant by a local carpenter Gilbert Gale. During her sufferings she is exposed to some of her family members' horrific secrets and is clearly mentally damaged by the end of the book, and unable to find happiness with Gilbert as planned. I thought this human dimension was well handled, and the plot a bit more original than they sometimes have been. ( )