The Second Death

May 30, 2016
Set in Ireland in 671 C.E., Tremayne’s 26th Sister Fidelma mystery (after 2015’s The Devil’s Seal) has one of the author’s craftiest setups. After a strange wagon joins up with some traveling entertainers en route to perform for the Great Fair of Cashel, it suddenly bursts into flame. The driver, a girl disguised as a boy, may have set the wagon on fire. She jumps off the burning vehicle, runs a few paces, then collapses and dies. After the conflagration is extinguished, the wagon is found to contain a rotting corpse of a man, who turns out to have been poisoned by the same substance that caused the girl’s death. Brother Eadulf, Fidelma’s longtime companion, witnesses these dramatic events; he quickly informs her of what’s transpired and begins to question other witnesses. The former religious sister is troubled when she learns that the entertainers have not been straight with her. Eadulf disappears in a subplot that distracts from the main story, and the payoff doesn’t match the intriguing opening. Agent: Charles Schlessiger, Brandt & Hochman.

July 1, 2016
While residents of the Kingdom of Muman, including Sister Fidelma, advocate of the law courts of seventh-century Ireland, and her companion, Brother Eadulf, prepare to celebrate the Great Fair of Cashel, a double murder most mysterious and seemingly steeped in pagan ritual and intrigue rears its ugly head. As a wagon train bearing revelers and a traveling troupe approaches Cashel, Eadulf witnesses a tragedy. One of the wagons has caught fire, and its driver, a young girl disguised as a boy, dies. Though smoke inhalation is initially suspected, further investigation reveals that she has been poisoned. Furthermore, another body, apparently dead for days, is discovered in the sealed wagon. As Fidelma and Eadulf attempt to solve the crime before the onset of the festivities, they are drawn further and further down a dark and twisted path leading indirectly to an unresolved conflict between Christianity and druidism. As Tremayne continues his long-running Mysteries of Ancient Ireland series, he not only provides crackling good yarns. He also continues to illuminate the fascinating political and religious history of Ireland's medieval era.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)