Serpent in the Thorns
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
The disgraced knight turned inquiry agent searches for a missing relic in this Macavity Award-finalist mystery set in fourteenth century London.
Former knight Crispin Guest is now known in the streets of medieval London as the Tracker—an investigator who can find anything and anyone. What begins as a straightforward case of murder turns complicated when Crispin realizes that the victim was an important courier in possession of a holy artifact—an object so valuable that its absence could start a war between France and England.
Surrounded by possible suspects, Guest will have to use his wiles to navigate both the exclusive halls of King Richard's court, and the hardscrabble streets of fourteenth century London. In a world full of old friends, mysterious strangers, and dangerous enemies—including the treasonous mastermind who caused Crispin's fall from grace—Crispin will have to uncover a deadly conspiracy to protect his country, save himself, and perhaps even restore his good name.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Westerson's second medieval mystery to feature former English knight Crispin Guest (after 2008's Veil of Lies) works better as a suspense novel than as a whodunit. Implicated in a plot against Richard II, the disgraced Guest (aka "the Tracker") has reinvented himself as an investigator for hire, with both private and public clients. One day in 1384, Grayce, a simpleminded scullion, seeks Guest's help because there's a dead man in her room at the King's Head Inn in Southwark. Grayce claims she killed the man, who turns out to have been a French courier bearing a gift for the English king the legendary Crown of Thorns, rumored to have been worn by Jesus and to have the ability to confer special powers on its wearer. The Tracker soon finds himself in a political tempest. Westerson's mix of period terms and American tough-guy prose at one point an archer asks the detective, "Didn't you use to be somebody?" may grate on the ears of some historical fans.
