Clare launches her new series in 1189, when Henry II of England has
died from an anal fistula and his contentious queen Eleanor of
Aquitaine, at large for the first time in 15 years, schemes to win
acceptance for her favorite son, the foreign Richard Plantagenet,
as king. Before he arrives from Poitiers, Eleanor, gambling on a
p.r. move in his name, empties England's prisons. Immediately, a
nun from the abbey of Hawkenlye meets a brutal death, and Richard's
childhood friend, soldier of fortune Josse d'Acquin, is dispatched
to handle the situation and salvage Richard's namea task more and
more complicated by what he learns from Helewise, the sharp Abbess
of Hawkenlye. Evidently the victim, Gunnora of Winnowlands, was
anything but a model novice, and she entered the convent under
passing strange circumstances. Like Josse, the prose proceeds so
overcarefully through the first half that little flaws in language
and logic (abbess candidates are `short-listed` and discuss a `case
of delayed shock`) stick out incongruously as Clare traces the
tangled web linking Gunnora's kin to a family with adjoining lands
and a series of more deliberate (and welcome) shocks. Queen Eleanor
reappears, more vital than Richard, to set up the series,
establishing Josse as future `king's man` for her famously absent
son; and even the late Gunnora returns to life. Cunningly shifting
sympathies among virtually all the players, Clare spotlights first
Helewise, then Josse, in a detecting competition that lifts the
partners above their predictable gender rolesJosse tracks in the
woods; Helewise has Miss Marple hunchesimmersing them in a suddenly
engrossing tale. (Kirkus Reviews)
IN A SACRED PLACE, UNHOLY PASSIONS LEAD TO MURDER...
Sunlight shone on the dark crimson blood, making it shine like a
jewel...thus the body of Gunnora, a young nun from Hawkenlye Abbey,
is found with her throat cut. Felons have been released from
English prisons at the command of the new king, Richard
Plantagenet, and suspicion centers on them. But when Josse
d'Acquin, the king's knight, arrives from France to investigate, he
discovers treacherous currents of lust, greed, and anger flowing
closer to the Abbey, and in the haunted Weald of Kent, whose woods
hide strange secrets...
With the help of the worldly, beautiful Abbess Helewise, Josse
ferrets out an array of suspects. Their one precious piece of
evidence is a gold, rubied cross. But the shocking truth of
Gunnora's death is an elusive -- and far more dangerous --
prize.
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