The Mansions of Murder

January 1, 2016

May 1381. The Great Peasants' Revolt is about to begin, and the envoy of the Upright Men, the Herald of Hell, walks the streets at night. In his 15th adventure (after The Book of Fires), Brother Athelstan is called to a brothel to investigate a hanging that might be murder.

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November 2, 2015
In 1381, new taxes levied on peasants have brought resentment to a fever pitch, and England’s leaders fear a revolt that will “topple both Church and Crown,” in Doherty’s solid 15th Brother Athelstan mystery (after 2014’s The Book of Fires). The Herald of Hell, an envoy of the Upright Men, the leaders of the insurrection, has been traveling around London, issuing warnings to those considered enemies of the rebels. Given the turmoil, Athelstan is naturally suspicious when chancery clerk Amaury Whitfield turns up dead. Whitfield was in the employ of Thibault, master of secrets for John of Gaunt, the kingdom’s regent, and when he’s found hanged in a locked room, Athelstan is convinced that the clerk was murdered. As always, Doherty excels in grafting a fair-play whodunit onto actual historical events, making the intrigue and fear of the period palpable while giving the astute reader a chance to solve the crime. Agent: David Headley, David Headley Literary Agency (U.K.).

January 1, 2016
As medieval London stands on the precipice of revolution, its citizenry is terrorized by restless bands of Upright Men inflamed by the audacity of the mysterious Herald of Hell. Stalking the grimy underbelly of the city at night, the Herald appears to be a sinister harbinger of doom. When Thibault, the ambitious John of Gaunt's Master of Secrets, summons Brother Athelstan, the savvy friar suspects the worst. Investigating the locked-room hanging of Thibault's chancery clerk, Athelstan, ably assisted by Sir John Cranston, Lord High Coroner of London, attempts to untangle a murder with its roots in a mysterious cipher that just might provide the key to both the crime and the culprit. In true Doherty fashion, the bodies pile up and the plot twists and turns before the satisfying and surprising conclusion. In addition to providing crackling whodunits, Doherty's long-running series (this is the fifteenth installment) continues to ratchet up the historical tension as actions and events move rapidly and inevitably toward the Peasant's Revolt of 1381.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

November 15, 2017
In Doherty's (A Pilgrimage to Murder, 2017) latest Brother Athelstan Medieval Mystery, the Great Revolt of 1381 is over, yet the streets of London are still rife with danger. Brutal gangs exert a dangerously insidious influence over their rival territories, but no gang master is more feared than Simon Makepeace, otherwise known as the Flesher. When Brother Athelstan and Sir John Cranston, Lord High Coroner of London, join forces to solve the murder of a priest inside the confines of a locked church, the mystery also involves the disappearance of a corpse awaiting burial and a stolen cache of money belonging to Makepeace. As his sleuths reach back into the past, long-buried secrets critically affecting present-day events are unearthed. Conjuring up medieval London in all its grime and glory, Doherty keeps readers guessing and the pages turning with yet another intricately plotted whodunit steeped in history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

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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