The Mansions of Murder

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. (Dec.)