The Mysterium

Starred review from March 19, 2012
Set in early 14th-century England, Doherty’s 17th whodunit featuring Hugh Corbett, “the Keeper of the King’s Secret Seal,” maintains the high standard of the previous entry, 2011’s Nightshade. Having just helped to quell a riot involving members of rival gangs, Corbett is plunged into one of the most baffling cases of his career. Walter Evesham, former chief justice in the Court of King’s Bench, has had his throat cut in a locked room. Carved on Evesham’s forehead is an M, the mark of a professional killer known as the Mysterium, who terrorized London two decades earlier. The assassin’s murderous career came to an end when Evesham caught him, but he later escaped custody. Corbett can trust almost no one as he pursues his investigation, not even Edward I, whose motivations are less than pure. The author has few peers at concealing fair clues in a historically accurate background. Agent: David H. Headley, D H H Literary Agency.

April 1, 2012
The extreme wealth, dire poverty and resulting intrigue of 1304 London lead to murder. Keeper of the Secret Seal Sir Hugh Corbett, problem solver for King Edward I, is tasked with solving several murders whose roots may lie deep in the past. Walter Evesham, Chief Justice in the Court of the King's Bench, has been accused of bribery and corruption. His attempts to atone for his sins at the Abbey of Syon are cut short when he's murdered in his locked cell. Suddenly people connected to one of his old cases are also found dead. The deaths appear to be the work of the Mysterium, the killer Evesham had caught years ago who vanished from the locked and guarded church of St. Botulph's. His former sanctuary is now awash in blood as Edward's men kill or capture escaped prisoners who are making a last stand. The priest is Parson John, Evesham's timid, ineffectual son, who claims that he barely knew his father. Also lodged at Syon are a number of people who have cause to hate Eversham. Corbett is convinced the answer to the riddle lies in Evesham's past investigation of the Mysterium, which probably accused an innocent man of murder for hire. As Corbett pores through old documents and uses his powers to question everyone involved, the Mysterium continues to kill. Only a clever trap will capture him. Doherty (Nightshade, 2011, etc.) provides another meticulously researched trip to the distant past, a clever mystery with a fine feel for the period.

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May 1, 2012
Sir Hugh Corbett, the keeper of the King's Secret Seal, returns in an all-new medieval mystery authentically set amid the grit and grime of fourteenth-century London. After several particularly brutal slayings, including the murder of Walter Evesham, the disgraced chief justice in the Court of the King's Bench, it appears that a copycat killer might be on the loose. Disturbingly, the methodology of the murders seems to mimic that of the Mysterium, a professional assassin allegedly brought to justice by Evesham two decades earlier. Has the Mysterium been resurrected or is someone using his grisly signature to cover his own tracks? In either case, all roads seem to lead back to Westminster, and the king commissions Corbett to investigate. Exhibiting his usual combination of composure and cunning, Sir Hugh solves a tangled mystery thoroughly steeped in past transgressions.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)