GRAVE OF THE LAWGIVER

A trip to revisit a boyhood home turns into a dangerous, soul-searching adventure.

Sister Fidelma and her husband, Brother Eadulf, have left their son behind in Ireland to visit Eadulf’s family in East Anglia. In 673 C.E., there’s plenty of dissension among Christians, and the couple walk into a hornet’s nest of murder and duplicity. Arriving in Seaxmund’s Ham, they find Eadulf’s uncle, the lawgiver Athelnoth, with a knife in his back in the ruins of his home, and Wulfrun, Eadulf’s much younger sister, missing. They’re accused by a mob of having done the deed. No one seems to recognize Eadulf, but several people claim to have seen Hibernian religious mounted on war horses at the scene. Taken to the home of the absent Thane Beornwulf, they’re greeted by Ardith, his house stewardess. Despite the attempts by the lowborn Stuf to condemn them, they’re finally recognized by Werferth, a friend of the returning Beornwulf, and Crída, Beornwulf’s senior retainer and a childhood friend of Eadulf’s. Having heard of the many mysteries Fidelma and Eadulf have unraveled, Beornwulf asks them to solve the murder and the disappearance. As they set off on a quest for information in hope of finding Wulfrun, they’re accompanied by Crída and Brother Ator, whose love for Wulfrun is undimmed by her lack of interest in marriage. The answer to many of their questions may lie with the mysterious men in religious garb riding war horses. The various sects of Britons still fighting over territory, along with members of religious sects claiming that their way is the true way, make for a volatile brew.

A thorny trail of deception set against an elaborate historical background.