It's the fourteenth century, and the Black Death has recently swept across France. A newly appointed Provost, Philippe Gautier, leaves Paris with his daughter Nicole to return to the town of his birth for a simpler life, away from the plague. He is immediately tasked with investigating the death of the wife of one of the town's wealthiest merchants, her body found strung up in the dyers' quarter dressed as an angel.
In a prison nearby, the only suspect in the murder case - once a performer of mystery plays - insists he is innocent of this crime but deserving of punishment for his many other transgressions. Now it is time for him to make his confession.
As the Player begins to recount the circumstances of his life, Philippe finds himself falling irresistibly in thrall to a story that excavates nefarious happenings in the town's past, and connects them to the present, and the threat of invasion by the English. Meanwhile his young daughter unwittingly finds herself at the centre of a dangerous web of secrets, that threaten her, her father and the whole town
A gothic detective story of love and loss, vanished children, ruined castles, plague ships, and the shadows of superstition and sorcery, from the electrifying author of Glorious Exploits...