In the Medieval Murderers' absorbing fourth serial historical (after 2007's House of Shadows
), six British mystery authors—Bernard Knight, Ian Morson, Michael Jecks, Philip Gooden, Susanna Gregory, C.J. Sansom—chart the impact of the Black Book of Brân over the centuries. In 574, the infant Brân washes ashore in Ireland with the eponymous book of prophesies, leading local churchmen to believe him to be demonic. More than 600 years later, the sinister tome causes havoc in Exeter when coroner John de Wolfe and cleric Thomas de Peyne must cope with priests who have caught gold fever during a killing spree. Brân's manuscript makes an implausible side trip to snowy 1262 Russia, but it's soon back in England amid mayhem in Westminster Abbey. The prophetic book, which has “a habit of bringing out the worst in people,” winds up in an appropriately apocalyptic future of polar ice melt, nuclear war, earthquakes and floods. (Feb.)
