The Holy Innocents
A pulse-pounding historical thriller
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- £1.99
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- £1.99
Publisher Description
A town paralysed with fear, two children gone missing. Roger’s most difficult case yet...
April, 1475. As Roger approaches the thriving village of Totnes, danger crackles in the air. A pack of cutthroats wanders the forest after a night of pillaging, and Roger barely manages to hide from them in the brush.
He soon learns that the marauding band has been terrorizing the countryside for weeks. And worse, they are believed to be responsible for the disappearance of two village children.
But how did the children get out of the house unnoticed in broad daylight? And would the outlaws really kill just for the sake of killing? Roger cannot rest – or rule out the possibility of more violence – until he solves the puzzle.
Another scintillating medieval mystery from master of the genre Kate Sedley, perfect for fans of Ellis Peters, Paul Doherty and Edward Marston.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The mysterious murder of two children captures the determined curiosity of Roger the chapman, the 15th-century English peddlar with a nose for detection, recently met in The Weaver's Tale (1994). With the War of the Roses a distant backdrop, the recently widowed Roger arrives in the town of Totnes, where he is asked to guard a fine house in the absence of its owner, Eudo Colet. A tavernkeeper, intimating witchcraft, tells Roger about the strange disappearance and death of Mary and Andrew, Colet's stepchildren, who had recently lost their mother, heiress Rosamund Crouchback. The children's nurse, a poor cousin of the dead heiress who hates Colet, asks the chapman to investigate. It was believed that the children, whose mutilated bodies were later found in the river, could not have left the house unobserved. At the time of their disappearance, Colet had been in the company of a town notable. Probing the seemingly prosperous and contented village society, Roger uncovers deep wells of greed and jealousy. As in the three previous Roger the chapman tales, Sedley weaves a compelling puzzle into the vividly colored tapestry of medieval English life.
