Absolution by Murder - Softcover

Peter Tremayne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747246025 ISBN 13: 9780747246022

Publisher: Headline Book Publishing, 1995

Synopsis

ABSOLUTION BY MURDER is the brilliant and evocative first novel in Peter Tremayne''s Sister Fidelma series, bringing 7th-century Ireland vividly to life.

PRAISE FOR ABSOLUTION BY MURDER: ''In the simultaneously sharp-tongued and full womanly figure of Sister Fidelma, Tremayne has created a heroine whom many readers will willingly follow. Even Brother Cadfael might have tolerated her'' Kirkus Reviews

As the leading churchmen and women gather at the Synod of Whitby in 664AD to debate the rival merits of the Celtic and Roman Churches, tempers begin to fray. Conspirators plot an assassination, while mysterious, violent death stalks the shadowy cloisters of the Abbey of St Hilda. When the Abbess Etain, a leading speaker for the Celtic Church, is found murdered suspicion inevitably rests on the Roman faction.

Attending the Synod is Fidelma, of the community of St Brigid of Kildare. As an advocate of the Brehon Court, she is called on to investigate the murder with Brother Eadulf, of the Roman faction. However, the two are so unlike that their partnership is described as that of a wolf and a fox - but which is which?

More gruesome deaths follow and the friction among the clerics could end in civil war. Can the solution to the mysteries avert such a conflict?

What readers are saying about ABSOLUTION OF MURDER:

''Superb storytelling from a usually neglected era. Read this and you will certainly want to read the rest of this excellent series''

''I was transported back in time; Peter Tremayne brought the location and characters to life''

''The story moves forward with Fidelma weaving her way through to the end with skill and intelligence. Well worth reading''

About this title

About the Author

Peter Tremayne is the fiction pseudonym of a well-known authority on the ancient Celts, who has utilised his knowledge of the Brehon law system and 7th-Century Irish society to create a new concept in detective fiction.

From Publishers Weekly

This immensely appealing launch of a new series is set in seventh-century Ireland, which in Tremayne's rendering is a golden age of enlightenment and of total equality for women. Such narrative stumbling blocks as an abundance of stereotypical characters and much more dynastic trivia, ecclesiastical and secular history than can be absorbed are offset by the vigorous, intriguing puzzle posed by a series of murders and by Sister Fidelma, the tale's brilliant and beguiling heroine. An ecclesiastical conclave to settle major divisions between the Roman and Celtic branch of Christianity is held at Whitby in 664. When a major proponent of the Celtic way, the Abbess of Kildare, is murdered, Sister Fidelma, a fellow Celtic follower and legally trained scholar, is asked to investigate. She is paired with her ideological opposite, Brother Eadulf, on the Roman side, who is shrewd, highly educated and immediately smitten with the outspoken sister. The intellectual and physical sparks that are ignited between these two clerics (in an age before celibacy) light up the pages, and when two monks are killed and the malevolence thickens, the book becomes difficult to put down. It is reassuring to read that Sister Fidelma and Brother Eadulf will reappear... next time in Rome.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Headline Book Publishing
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0747246025
• ISBN 13: 9780747246022
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288