Murder in the Holy City by Simon Beaufort

Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Puzzle fans must contend with an endlessly repetitive, confusing, and dull slog.Īnother sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.Ī week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Readers interested in the place and period will find them portrayed here in infinitesimal detail. This he does, at numbing, bumbling length, until a final bloody battle. Geoffrey is commissioned by Tancred and, later, by the Advocate to investigate. The victims are three priests and two knights, one of whom, a friend of Geoffrey’s, is found dead in the house of Greek widow Melisende Mikelos-and, like the others, stabbed to death with a gaudy knife that quickly disappears. Both religious and soldier communities are frightened by a series of killings. The city is being ruled by quietly warring religious factions-Archbishop Daimbert, the Patriarch, in service of the Pope the Benedictines of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, headed by Duke Godfrey of Lorraine, who calls himself the Advocate Augustinians, Cistercians, and others, all fighting for power. Sir Geoffrey de Mappestone of England, a landless younger son educated in France, is a knight in the service of Lord Tancred of Italy and Tancred’s uncle Bohemond. A new entry in the historical mystery genre, this set, in 1100, in a Jerusalem occupied by conquering Crusaders.

Murder in the Holy City by Simon Beaufort