Book description
It's the summer of 1380 and the corpse of Edwin Chapler, clerk of the
Office of the Green Wax of the Chancery, has been pulled from the
Thames: Chapler has drowned, but not before he received a vicious blow
to the back of the head. Then Bartholomew Drayton, a usurer and
money-lender, is found dead in his strongroom, a crossbow firmly
embedded in his chest: a real mystery because the windowless strongroom
was locked and barred from the inside. So who killed him; And how; And
are the two deaths connected; Sir John Cranston, the Coroner of the City
of London, comes to survey the scene. When other clerks are murdered,
each with a riddle pinned to his corpse, Cranston enlists the help of
his secretarius, Brother Athelstan; and together they must pit their
wits against a deadly adversary bent on murder and mayhem.