Master sleuth Colin Pendragon and his trusted partner, Ethan Pruitt, leave their familiar cosmopolitan London for rural Sussex County, where the bucolic peace has been shattered by the murder of a monk…
At the request of his father, Pendragon and Pruitt travel to the town of Dalwich, where a gruesome crime has desecrated the hallowed halls of Whitmore Abbey. The abbott has been slaughtered in his cell with multiple stab wounds and his tongue cut out. Although Father Demetris, the local bishop's associate, has faith that the killer must be an outsider from the village, Pendragon considers no man above suspicion--including the brooding brothers of the order.
But before Pendragon and Pruitt can make much progress in their investigation, a second corpse is found--a barmaid who has been mutilated in the same way as the monk. Now they must determine if there is a connection between the butchered Benedictine and the victim from the village. Whether the killer comes from within the walls of Whitmore Abbey or without, it will be up to Pendragon and Pruitt to illuminate--and unravel--a deadly mystery before more lives are lost…
