October 9, 2017
How did someone commit two murders and escape a locked church with not only a corpse but also a king’s ransom? That’s the baffling problem confronting Brother Athelstan in Doherty’s clever 18th outing for the Dominican friar (after 2016’s A Pilgrimage to Murder). England is in turmoil toward the end of 1381 in the aftermath of the failure of the Great Revolt. With Londoners frightened by ominous portents, their city becomes the battleground for conflicts between rival nobles, who use vicious street gangs as their proxies in their struggles for power. The authorities call in Athelstan, who’s known for his deductive brilliance, to investigate a horrific discovery in St. Benet: Reynaud Filleby, the church’s parson, and Giles Daventry, a henchman of the Lord of Arundel, were stabbed to death, apparently by someone they trusted, who also made off with the body of the mother of London’s most vicious gang leader and heavy sacks of gold and silver coins. As usual, Doherty plays fair and enhances the whodunit plot with the violent politics of the time.
October 1, 2017
A Dominican friar well-versed in puzzles must solve a locked-room murder.John of Gaunt has managed to quell the rebellion of 1381, and his nephew Richard II sits upon a throne coveted by many noble lords. As London seethes with revolutionaries, thieves, whores, and murderers, Martha, the housekeeper of St. Benet's, finds the doors of the ancient church locked from the inside. Breaking in, the curate and others find both the priest and a retainer of the powerful Lord of Arundel stabbed to death, a large amount of coin missing, and the corpse of Simon Makepeace's mother. Makepeace, a vicious murderer known as the Flesher, who heads the worst gang in London, is furious about the double loss of his mother and his gold, which was kept hidden in the church. Back in his own parish, Brother Athelstan is informed by his housekeeper, Benedicta, of her own strange discovery: the embalmed bodies of the husband and son of Margo, a recently deceased widow, seated at a table in the hidden cellar of her cottage. Athelstan, who's long helped powerful coroner Sir John Cranston solve crimes (The Herald of Hell, 2016, etc.), joins him now to solve the locked-church murder. They soon realize that the two mysterious discoveries are related by more than mystery. Margo's family were archers who had served with Sir John on a special mission to claim the Rose Casket and its contents of precious stones known as the Twelve Apostles as reparations from France. Their vessel was attacked, probably by the Flesher, and sunk, and the great treasure vanished, though rumors of its reappearance abound. Both Sir John's and Athelstan's skills are stretched to the limit as they work to solve several crimes, recover the treasure, and somehow bring down the powerful Flesher.A clever mystery neatly woven into a historically accurate rendering of life in a truly hellish London.
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April 1, 2019
In 1381, a serial killer stalks the prostitutes of London, slashing their throats, stripping them naked, and, most bizarrely, placing blood-red wigs upon their heads. As panic mounts, Sir John Cranston, lord high coroner of London, once again calls upon wily parish priest Brother Athelstan to investigate the heinous crimes. Oddly enough, the murders seem to be linked to a string of vicious attacks perpetrated on innocent Frenchwomen by a gang of Englishmen led by the Orriflame, a mysterious masked henchman wearing women's clothing and a bright red wig, nearly 20 years prior. The Orriflame seems to have resurfaced on the grimy streets of London, and it's up to Athelstan, before even more bodies pile up, to expose the killer and uncover his connection to the deadly explosion of a royal ship bound for France. As always, Doherty displays exceptional narrative flair as he brings the often-squalid sights, sounds, and smells of medieval London to life in another artfully crafted and plotted historical mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)
February 1, 2019
A serial killer strikes London in 1381.Someone has been brutally murdering prostitutes, leaving them with their throats cut, naked save for some outlandish red wigs. It's clearly a case for Athelstan, the Dominican parish priest who, together with his friend Sir John Cranston, Lord High Coroner of London, has solved many a perplexing crime (The Mansions of Murder, 2018, etc.)--even though they must also look into the mysterious case of the royal ship The Knave of Hearts, loaded with gunpowder and gold as it left on a trip to France, which blew up on the Thames, leaving no survivors. London is rife with rumors about the Oriflamme, whose name has not been spoken in almost 20 years. Back when England's armies were ravaging Normandy earlier in the Hundred Years' War, a man of that name was leader of a gang using the war barge Le Sans Dieu, or "The Godless," as a base for killing, plundering, and torturing women who were left dead or dying, wearing red wigs like the one the Oriflamme himself wore along with a white mask and a woman's dress. Because one of the lost was a woman of high birth, the French are now in London seeking revenge. Many who served in France, enriched by the plunder, now lead respectable lives, but they're still haunted by the sins of the past. These include members of Athelstan's parish like Godbless, who turns up dead in a building that appears to be locked from inside. Athelstan and Cranston must tap all their many sources to find clues to the Oriflamme's identity as he continues to kill at will.The mystery this time takes second place to some unpleasant historical truths: gruesome portraits of murder in a London so squalid it may make your hair stand on end.
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Starred review from February 18, 2019
Sir John Cranston, Lord High Coroner of London, needs Brother Athelstan’s help in Doherty’s outstanding 19th historical featuring the Dominican parish priest (after 2017’s The Mansions of Murder). In 1381, someone has been slashing the throats of prostitutes, stripping their corpses, and adorning their heads with a red wig before leaving the bodies in a skiff on the Thames. While some believe the red wig symbolizes the victims’ profession, Athelstan and Cranston think it’s connected with events from 1363 when a masked figure known as the Oriflamme, who dressed in women’s clothing and wore a red wig, led a company of Englishmen who plundered the French countryside and abused their female victims before killing them. The stakes rise when a royal ship, which was supposed to deliver treasure to the English garrison in Calais, instead explodes in the Thames. The sole survivor, the ship’s master, claims to have seen the Oriflamme on board. Doherty keeps the action brisk, the crimes baffling, and the deductions and solution fair.