Shroud of Dishonour

August 30, 2010
When the strangled body of a young woman turns up in a Templar chapel, hidden in a garment chest, near the outset of Ash's gripping fourth Templar Knight mystery (after 2009's Murder for Christ's Mass), Sir Bascot de Marins and the sheriff of Lincoln investigate. By committing such an abominable crime, the killer evidently meant to defile not just a chapel but a Templar one in particular. The Templar knight and the sheriff soon discover the victim was a prostitute. When a second prostitute is likewise garroted, the murderer carves a familiar emblem into her left breast: the cross pattée of the Templar Order. The rules of obedience and secrecy Sir Bascot has sworn to the Templar Order test the loyalties of the knight, who's not bound by the king's law. Ash paints a lively picture of early 13th-century Lincolnshire society.