The Hanging Tree

by Paul Doherty Book 21 in the Brother Athelstan Mysteries series.

First published 2022

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London, January 1382. A large quantity of gold and silver is stolen from the Crown’s supposedly secure treasury, and the five clerks guarding it are found garrotted. Brother Athelstan and Sir John Cranston are ordered to discover how the chamber was breached and who could have overcome both its elaborate locks and its keepers.

The case reaches Athelstan’s own parish when Clement, the locksmith who helped construct the treasury’s defences, is found strangled inside St Erconwald’s church. At the same time, six London executioners are murdered and left with messages invoking vengeance by the Upright Men. The investigators must determine whether the treasury robbery and the attacks on the hangmen are separate crimes or parts of a single plan rooted in the resentments that survived the Great Revolt.