Condemned to Death

Starred review from December 22, 2014
Harrison has never been better than in her 12th historical starring Irish investigating magistrate and law school dean Mara (after 2014’s Verdict of the Court). Under Irish law in the 16th century, murdering a close relative is punished by setting the guilty party out to sea in a boat without oars. When a boat without oars containing the body of an unidentified man drifts onto the shore of the Kingdom of the Burren, the locals assume that the dead man must have been a kin-slayer. Mara’s oldest scholar, Domhnall, later tells her that he thinks he recognizes the corpse as that of a goldsmith from Galway, a city farther up the Atlantic coast that’s governed by English law, which punishes kin-slayers by hanging. Mara concludes that someone murdered the goldsmith and hoped to disguise the cause of death. As Mara’s sleuthing leads her to a clever and disturbing solution, Harrison seamlessly integrates law and social history (e.g., Mara notes that the emergence of the merchant profession obligates setting a legal penalty for killing one). Agent: Peter Buckman, Ampersand Agency (U.K.).

December 2, 2013
Mara, the Brehon (or judge) for the area of Ireland known as the Burren doesn’t overlook a subtle murder clue in Harrison’s clever 10th 16th-century historical (after 2013’s Chain of Evidence). Kilnaboy Church, where Mara and five of her law students help celebrate the Feast of the Holy Cross, is home to what is reputedly a piece of the true cross—until someone sets a fire that destroys the relic. This act of arson is but the prelude to a killing that leaves a man’s naked corpse laid out on a tomb, displayed as if he had been crucified. Mara assumes there’s a connection between the two crimes and investigates, aided by her able pupils. The victim’s decision to skip breakfast on the day he was murdered proves vital to Mara’s inquiry, which leads to one of Harrison’s most intriguing solutions. The chapter epigraphs, drawn from medieval Irish texts, offer a tantalizing glimpse into the legal system of another time and place. Agent: Peter Buckman, Ampersand Agency (U.K.).