Night of the Lightbringer
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3.8 • 6 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A stranger murdered in a gruesome ritual. A prophetess foretelling the return of the ancient gods: the intriguing new Sister Fidelma mystery.
Ireland, AD 671. On the eve of the pagan feast of Samhain, Brother Edulf and the warrior, Aidan, discover a man murdered in an unlit pyre in the heart of Cashel. He has been dressed in the robes of a religieux and killed by the ritualistic 'three deaths'.
When a strange woman known as Brancheó appears in a raven-feather cloak foretelling of ancient gods returning to exact revenge upon the mortal world, she is quickly branded a suspect. But in their search for the killer, Sister Fidelma and Eadulf will soon discover a darker shadow looming over the fortress. For their investigation is linked to a book stolen from the Papal Secret Archives which could destroy the New Faith in the Five Kingdoms...and Fidelma herself will come up against mortal danger before the case is unravelled
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of Tremayne's solid 28th whodunit set in seventh-century Ireland (after 2017's Penance of the Damned), the Biblos Iakobos, a heretical book considered a serious threat to Christianity for its contention that Jesus was just a mortal rabbi, disappears from the papal palace in Rome. The thieves are visitors from the Five Kingdoms of ire, whose inhabitants "prefer their own interpretations of the Faith to the wisdom that Rome can offer them." A church representative travels to Ireland to retrieve the incendiary volume. Meanwhile, in the region of Ireland ruled by King Colg , the brother of series lead Sister Fidelma, a shepherd's corpse is found concealed at the base of a woodpile to be used for a bonfire for a pre-Christian festival. The ritualistic way the man was killed suggests that he was a victim of the so-called threefold death. Sister Fidelma, who serves as Colg 's legal adviser, investigates. Her solution of the shepherd's murder is both plausible and satisfying, as is the eventual integration of the Biblos Iakobos plot line. Tremayne effectively explores the era's religious schisms.
