Suffer Little Children

by Peter Tremayne Book 3 in the Sister Fidelma Mysteries series.

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Muman in the mid-seventh century. The respected scholar Dacán has been murdered while visiting the remote abbey of Ros Ailithir. Because he belonged to the neighbouring kingdom of Laigin, his death is used to demand an indemnity that could lead to war. The dying king of Muman sends Fidelma and the warrior Cass to establish who killed him before political negotiations collapse.

At the abbey, the scholar's work, his interest in local children and the ambitions of rival kingdoms prove inseparable. Fidelma must reconstruct Dacán's purpose in travelling to Ros Ailithir and determine who benefits from presenting an individual murder as an act of state aggression.

Fidelma’s legal training matters because early Irish law treats compensation, status and inter-kingdom responsibility through rules very different from later English criminal procedure. Dacán’s death can therefore become grounds for a political claim even before the killer is known. Solving the case requires her to prevent legal custom from being manipulated into justification for war.