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UK Authors - Mystery |
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The Field of Blood |
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 The Field of Blood byPaul Doherty Headline 247 pages, 1999 ISBN 074722238X Reviewed by our UK Editor Rachel A. Hyde Brother Athelstan is summoned from his Southwark church to find three corpses grinning up at him. They are all murder victims who have been found in an old haunted house, but worse is to come - one of them is a royal messenger. According to law, the parish in which a royal messenger’s corpse is found must pay a heavy fine unless the murderer can be produced, and St Erconwald’s is a very poor parish. Meanwhile, a tavern prostitute has just accused a respectable widow and owner of an unusually fine and prosperous tavern of murdering people and burying them in the Black Meadow near her inn. Mistress Vestler has been arrested and taken to prison - but is she guilty of the murders? When several bodies are found in the meadow it begins to look suspicious, but who is the strange quartet known as The Four Gospels living on the meadow and waiting for St Michael to come down the Thames on a barge? That engaging duo - Brother Athelstan and Sir John Cranston - are back for their ninth adventure with their loveable crew of rascally parishioners. As usual there is murder and mayhem aplenty -missing treasure, wizard’s grimoires, weird secret societies and all the muck and majesty of the middle ages. Doherty delivers a tautly plotted story that isn’t a page too long and kept me guessing whodunit right to the end. A very enjoyable book. |
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