Description:

The enthralling new Burren mystery . . . April 1511, Ireland. Mara, Brehon of the Burren, is celebrating the christening of her son when she notices that three of her law students have disappeared from the party. The next morning, one of them is found dead on a lone mountain pass with suspicious wounds. He was carrying an important legal document that has now disappeared. But why did he choose to deliver it during the night, and what of the two other missing students? Mara must uncover the truth – and it at first seems that the stolen deed holds all the answers . . .

Review

Peter Tremayne fans who can't get enough of his feisty seventh-century Irish sleuth, Sister Fidelma, will find Harrison's 16th-century Irish "judge and lawgiver," Mara, a more than acceptable substitute. At the start of the seventh entry (after May 2011's Scales of Retribution), Mara and her husband, King Turlough Donn O'Brien, are holding a belated christening party for their baby son, Cormac, at their castle in western Ireland. Then three of the guests go missing: flirtatious Fiona MacBetha, a law student of Mara's; another law student, Fachtnan, who's sweet on Fiona; and 26-year-old lawyer Eamon, Fachtnan's rival for Fiona's affections. Later, farmer Muiris O'Hynes finds Eamon's dead body in a flax shed. O'Hynes recently caused a stir by winning a bid for a land lease that historically always went to a large local family, but the deed formalizing his right to work the property has disappeared. As usual, Harrison makes combining a whodunit with the subtleties of Irish law look easy. -- Publishers Weekly Starred Review, October 10, 2011

Brehon Mara returns in an all-new adventure steeped in Irish history and fascinating legal arcana. As a judge and investigating magistrate, and as the wife of King Turlough, Mara occupies a unique position in the Burren, an independent kingdom in western Ireland. After three of her law students disappear and one turns up dead, Mara is determined to get to the bottom of a mystery that may have far-reaching consequences for both her husband and his entire realm. Utilizing her keen intellect and her razor-sharp powers of deduction, she exposes a treasonous plot with tangled roots in the court of King Henry VIII of England. Intrigue, deception, and age-old feuds between neighboring kingdoms culminate in a suspensefully clever conclusion. Mara, like Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma, exemplifies the fairly independent status accorded to professional women in medieval Ireland. --Booklist, November 1, 2011

About the Author

Cora Harrison taught primary-school children for twenty-five years before moving to Kilfenora, County Clare, to live on a small farm where there used to be an Iron Age fort. She has published twenty-five children's historical novels. This is her first novel for adults. Please visit her Web site at www.coraharrison.com.