The Hanging Tree
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Brother Athelstan must solve a theft from the royal treasure chamber and the murders of six executioners in this gripping medieval mystery.
London. January, 1382. The Crown’s treasury has been robbed. Tens of thousands of silver and gold coin mysteriously lifted from the most secure chamber in the kingdom; the five Clerks of the Dark who guarded the king's treasure brutally garrotted. Sir John Cranston and Brother Athelstan are appointed to investigate – but Athelstan has problems of his own. Clement the Key Master, who helped fashion the complex locks to the royal treasure chamber, has been found strangled in the nave of Athelstan's parish, St Erconwald's church.
At the same time, six of the city's hangmen have been savagely murdered, their bodies stripped. Pinned to each corpse is a scrawled note: "Vengeance! The Upright Men never forget!" The Guild of Hangmen who frequent the majestic tavern, The Hanging Tree, on the River Thames, have petitioned for Sir John and Brother Athelstan to find the culprit. But have the sleuthing pair taken on more than they can handle . . . and could the two investigations be connected?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1382, Doherty's memorable 21st mystery featuring Brother Athelstan (after 2020's The Stone of Destiny) poses multiple baffling puzzles that are all resolved logically. Athelstan and his superior and friend, Sir John Cranston, Lord High Coroner of London, are summoned to the House of the Exchequer in Westminster following a spectacular robbery and mass murder. Five armed clerks were garroted, with no signs of resistance, behind a double-locked door at the top of a tower accessible only via a booby-trapped narrow staircase. Whoever murdered the men also made off with tens of thousands of pounds worth of gold and silver coins that they'd been guarding, leaving behind bags of burnt charcoal. The money was intended to be used to repay the Crown's debt to Italian bankers who'd loaned considerable sums to prop up the rule of Richard II. Meanwhile, Athelstan must also solve the case of a killer who's stabbed six hangmen through the heart before leaving their corpses on dung heaps. As always, Doherty makes a past century come alive in the service of a carefully crafted plot. Impossible crime fans will be pleased.
