Murder’s Snare

Doherty’s rip-roariing latest mystery featuring 14th-century Dominican priest Brother Athelstan (after Murder Most Treasonable) reinforces the author’s reputation as a master of historical crime fiction. In addition to serving as a clergyman, Athelstan employs his superior deductive talents to help Sir John Cranston, London’s lord high coroner, solve crimes. Cranston calls on Athelstan after a pair of killings among England’s elite rattles the upper classes. First, Lord Philip Kyne is beheaded in his manor by a masked figure, who then delivers Kyne’s head to the keeper of the London Bridge with instructions that it should be publicly displayed. Then a second nobleman is slain who shares a dark past with Kyne; decades earlier, both were members of the Via Crucis, an English military company in France who massacred civilians and looted their property after the English defeated the French army. As Athelstan develops a theory that the victims of that massacre have launched a revenge campaign, a tax collector is found stabbed to death in a locked and sealed room. Solving both mysteries will test the clergyman’s detection skills like they never have been before. As always, Doherty makes the streets of Medieval England teem with life and plays scrupulously fair with the reader. This is a deeply satisfying puzzle. (Dec.)