Candle Flame

May 5, 2014
Brother Athelstan, secretary and clerk to Sir John Cranston, London’s Lord High Coroner, has a complicated multiple murder case to unravel in Doherty’s intricate 13th whodunit set in 14th-century England (after 2013’s The Straw Men). The killer’s bloody night of work has left nine dead, including Edmund Marsen, a tax collector, whose body was found in a locked room in a Southwark tavern called the Candle-Flame. Many people hated Marsen, on account of his vigorous and cruel pursuit of money for his master, John of Gaunt, self-styled regent to the young king, Richard II. Suspicion focuses on a group known as the Upright Men, who oppose Gaunt. Further bloodshed presents Athelstan with a second impossible murder to solve. Doherty devises logical explanations for the crimes—no mean feat, given how many he’s devised in his several historical series. Agent: David Headley, David Headley Literary Agency (U.K.).