The Abbey Close

by Steven Veerapen Book 1 in the Simon Danforth Mysteries series.

First published 2018

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3.8(868)

Paisley, 1542. Simon Danforth, a Catholic exile with a difficult past, is drawn into the closed and suspicious world around the abbey as Scotland and England move towards war. Employed by Cardinal David Beaton, he encounters violence and secrets at the same moment that James V’s kingdom faces military disaster on the border.

The Anglo-Scottish crisis culminating in the Battle of Solway Moss and the political role of James V and Beaton are historical. Simon Danforth and the central crime are fictional. The novel opens a series in which religious allegiance, medicine, patronage and murder are tied to the instability of sixteenth-century Scotland.

Beaton’s employment of Simon places the investigation inside the religious and diplomatic tensions of James V’s final year. Catholic institutions remain powerful, but reforming ideas and English pressure are already reshaping Scottish politics. The abbey’s enclosed community therefore becomes a place where personal crime can be mistaken for religious conspiracy and political suspicion can conceal ordinary motives.