The novel “The Mask of the Night” (2004) is from the series of “Shakespearean” detective stories by the English writer Philip Gooden. Nick Revill, a contemporary of Shakespeare, an actor in the Lord Chamberlain's troupe and an amateur detective, again becomes an accidental witness to mysterious and tragic events. Fleeing from the plague epidemic that has engulfed London, the actors go to Oxford to commemorate the reconciliation of two warring families with the production of Romeo and Juliet, but the Black Death overtakes them there too. In such circumstances, Revill dares to look for an answer to the terrible question: does the deadly plague have accomplices among people and who are they? There are too many suspicious coincidences for everything to be explained by natural causes. An excellent gift for fans of historical detective fiction!