Changes

|title=The Tournament

|sort=Tournament, The

|publisher=Orion

|date=January 2014

|website=http://www.matthewreilly.com/

|summary=When the plague returns to 16th Century England it is thought best to send the young Princess Elizabeth to Constantinople to watch the upcoming chess championship. Crikey! If that was not dangerous enough, a murderer is loose on the streets and Bess, along with her tutor, must solve the crime.

}}

Matthew Reilly is somewhat of a guilty pleasure of mine; his novels are hi-octane adventures that are often as ludicrous as they are sublime. ‘The Tournament’ is a departure from his action packed Scarecrow and Jack West thrillers; instead creating an alternative history for our own Queen Elizabeth I. Why was she such a formidable leader whose reluctance to marry and dislike of the Catholics were only part of her make-up? Reilly poses a hypothetical tale about a 13 year old Bess going to Constantinople to watch a tournament of the world’s greatest chess players. Here she will be embroiled in a murder mystery alongside her tutor Roger Ascham.