Englishwoman Edith Pargeter wasn’t a historian by training, but under the pen name Ellis Peters she created one of the most popular detective series—tightly linked to major historical events that shook 12th-century England and Wales, from where Pargeter’s ancestors came.
“The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael” is both a political detective story—because it unfolds against the backdrop of the civil war between the supporters of the legitimate claimant to Queen Matilda’s throne and King Stephen of Blois, who seized the throne by force—and classic, intimate stories that happen among the residents of the town of Shrewsbury and its surroundings, as well as among the inhabitants of the Benedictine abbey in Shrewsbury. It was here, in the autumn of his years, that an old crusader retired—an experienced soldier who, having taken the name Brother Cadfael, decided to live out the rest of his days peacefully, serving God and healing people. But instead, Cadfael—an astute connoisseur of human souls and a man with a wealth of life experience—repeatedly has to investigate the most different crimes and save not only bodies, but also souls…
In the eleventh series of the Chronicles, Brother Cadfael must figure out what two newly arrived monks are hiding. One of them is mute, the other is dying. And the secret behind them is so ominous that it could destroy both the lives and the future of the sacred order.