The Godless

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.)