MURDER WEARS A COWL

This sixth adventure for 14th-century clerk Hugh Corbett (The Prince of Darkness, 1993, etc.) is one of his liveliest, whether because Edward I has just knighted him—as an inducement to travel to London for his latest investigation—or because of the nature of the mystery itself: who's been slitting the throats of over a dozen upscale courtesans? Following the trail of slippery plotter Richard Puddlicott, last seen in Paris meeting with King Philip's chancellor, Corbett and his manservant Ranulf soon link the murders to a series of orgies greasing the wheels of an ingenious plot to finance Philip's wars in Flanders by spiriting the British Crown's treasures out of Westminster Abbey. But the solution to the killings, not revealed until after Puddlicott's insouciant confession to the theft, uncomfortably implicates those saviors to fallen women, the Sisters of St. Martha. Only the denouement, which drones on as long as a Latin Mass, falls short of the bright plotting and deftly understated period detail. An epilogue, though, holds out the hope that Ranulf, unusually subdued here, may be ready to strike out on his own.