Vale of Tears

Name: Vale of Tears
Rating: 4.45 (1864 reviews)

by Sarah Hawkswood Book 5 in the Bradecote & Catchpoll series.

First published 2019

Amazon

4.5(1,864)

April 1144. A stabbed man is found in the water beside Fladbury mill, yet his possessions have not been taken. Bradecote, Catchpoll and Walkelin identify him as a horse dealer whose young wife has attracted lovers and resentment. The missing horse and the victim’s business dealings complicate an apparently domestic crime.

The trail reaches back to a defrocked monk hanged for theft and to other deaths that have never been considered part of the same sequence. The investigators must establish whether jealousy, profit or the consequences of an earlier miscarriage of justice motivated the killing. Their inquiry exposes how quickly reputation can substitute for proof in a rural community.