Dancing with Demons
A Mystery of Ancient Ireland
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- USD 14.99
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- USD 14.99
Publisher Description
"Tremayne writes so authentically about this remote time period that readers will feel they are there in every way...a delight!" -- Library Journal (starred review) on Master of Souls
"The action is tense and gripping...a compelling, enjoyable adventure." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer on The Monk Who Vanished
In the late 7th Century, the High King of Ireland is killed at night in the middle of his compound. Who killed him is not in question - there are unimpeachable witnesses that point directly to the clan chieftain responsible. Dubh Duin is, after all, found by the High King's guards in the High King's bed chamber holding the murder weapon. But with impending civil war in the balance, the motive for the murder becomes of paramount importance.
The Chief Brehon of Ireland asks Fidelma of Cashel - sister to the King of Muman and a dailagh - to investigate. What her investigations reveal is an intricate web of conspiracy and deception that threatens to unbalance the five kingdoms and send them spiralling into a violent and bloody civil war and religious conflict. And it's up to Fidelma to not only see to justice but to private the violent fracturing of an increasingly fragile peace.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Judicial advocate Sister Fidelma takes on her most sensitive assignment yet in Tremayne's excellent 16th mystery set in seventh-century Ireland (after 2007's A Prayer for the Damned). When Sechnussach, "High King of the five kingdoms of ireann," is assassinated, the killer appears to be a kinsman, Dubh Duin, found in the king's bed chamber, dying by his own hand and still bearing the knife that apparently struck the fatal blow. Since the powers-that-be are concerned that Sechnussach's heir, Cenn Faelad, not fall under suspicion, they appoint Fidelma, as an outsider, to uncover the motive for the crime. She soon finds that a person, possibly someone close to the throne, had arranged for Duin to get past the king's guards and enter Sechnussach's chamber unchallenged. Tremayne does his usual masterful job of depicting the strain between Christianity and the Old Faith, and provides a logical, if surprising, twist toward the end.
