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Overview
An administrator at Canterbury Cathedral, Richard Harrison isn't much troubled by a nasty anonymous letter that has turned up, alleging sexual misconduct in a local parish. But the situation turns much more than unpleasant when Harrison stumbles on a brutal double-murder. Following the leads will demand that Harrison investigate not only the sale of a 200-year-old cottage but also, bizarrely, the work of Christopher Marlowe, the 16th-century playwright. And to find the truth he will have to ask many hard questions of the Church he loves, and shiver through that midnight hour when, in the words of Marlowe's Dr Faustus, 'the clock will strike, and the devil will come.'
Synopsis
The sequestered peace of the Canterbury Cathedral community is shattered by the arrival of a poison pen letter. Reluctantly dragged from his administrative duties to investigate the allegations of gross sexual misconduct between a recently widowed parson and his female assistant, senior Church official Richard Harrison accidentally stumbles upon the horrific scene of a double killing. In doing so, he is set on a lonely, tortuous path to discover the identity of the anonymous letter-writer, whose malicious libels apparently precipitated the tragic deaths. Faced with a seemingly motiveless crime, Harrison follows a maze of leads in which the proposed sale of a 200-year-old charity cottage and the short, violent life of Christopher Marlowe, the sixteenth-century poet and playwright, appear to twine about the bizarre happenings in a country parish.
Library Journal
Richard Harrison, who works for the Board of the Anglican Church in Canterbury, England, chances upon an apparent murder-suicide in a locked-from-the-inside building. Since the deaths probably tie in with an anonymous note alleging sexual misconduct by a priest and a female deacon, Harrison's higher-up has asked him to investigate. Harrison suspects double murder from the onset, so his inquiring mind sets to work--with some insistent prodding from his wheelchair-bound wife. A solid plot and excellent characterization by the author of Dark Provenance override the occasional over-extended similes.