Jewish physician Jacob of Provencal secretly asks Crispin Guest to recover stolen parchments connected with a succession of brutal murders of boys in London. The request is dangerous in itself: Jews had been expelled from England in 1290, so Jacob’s presence at court must remain discreet. As the killings accumulate, rumours claim the missing writings can summon a demon. Crispin and Jack Tucker have to decide what is human crime, what is deliberately cultivated fear and why someone is exploiting a forbidden outsider and an apparently supernatural text.
The novel uses the reign of Richard II to explore the persistence of Jewish learning and anti-Jewish suspicion nearly a century after the expulsion. Physicians, translated texts and manuscript traditions could cross borders even when communities were legally excluded, while accusations of ritual or demonic wrongdoing offered a ready language for prejudice. Westerson keeps the supernatural claim within a detective framework: Crispin’s task is to read bodies, motives and documents in a society where religious belief is real and powerful, without assuming that every fearful explanation is true.
