Saintly Murders

Name: Saintly Murders
Rating: 4.5 (1186 reviews)

by Paul Doherty Book 5 in the Kathryn Swinbrooke Mysteries series.

First published 2001

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4.5(1,186)

Canterbury, 1472. Physician and apothecary Kathryn Swinbrooke is appointed Advocatus Diaboli to examine claims that the recently dead friar Roger Atworth deserves beatification. Reports of miracles have gathered around his body, but Kathryn’s questions soon suggest that the circumstances of Atworth’s death are less holy than his admirers believe.

The inquiry becomes a murder investigation when she finds links between the friary and the death of an English spy. Religious devotion, political intelligence and personal ambition overlap inside a community that has reasons to welcome a saint and equal reasons to conceal scandal. Kathryn must separate genuine belief from deliberate manipulation while the killer remains free. The case uses the formal process of testing a candidate for sainthood as the framework for a mystery about evidence, reputation and the danger of challenging a story that powerful people want accepted.