About this item
A riveting historical murder-mystery by the bestselling author of The Quincunx. There are three separate tales interwoven in this novel-three tales that could be called ghost stories, for their mysteries can never be resolved, the victims and the perpetrators never laid to rest. Dr. Courtine, an unworldly academic, is invited to spend the days before Christmas with an old friend. Twenty years have passed since Courtine and Austin last met, and the invitation to Austin's home in the cathedral close of Thurchester is a welcome one. When Courtine arrives, Austin tells him a tale of deadly rivalry and murder two centuries old. The mystery captures Courtine's donnish imagination, as it is intended to do. Courtine also plans to pursue his research into another unresolved and older mystery in the labyrinthine cathedral library. If he can track down an elusive eleventh-century manuscript, he hopes to dispose of a deadly rival of his own. Doubly distracted, Courtine becomes unwittingly enmeshed in the sequence of terrible events that follows his arrival, and he becomes witness to a murder that seems never to have been committed.
About the Author
Charles Palliser (born December 11, 1947) is an American-born, British-based novelist. He is the elder brother of the late author and freelance journalist Born in New England, Palliser is an American citizen, but has lived in the United Kingdom since the age of three. He attended Oxford University in 1967 to read English Language and Literature, and took a First in June 1970. He was awarded the B. Litt. in 1975 for a dissertation on Modernist fiction. From 1974 until 1990, Palliser was a Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. He was the first Deputy Editor of The Literary Review when it was founded in 1979. He taught creative writing during the Spring semester of 1986 at Rutgers University in New Jersey. In 1990 he gave up his university post to become a full-time writer when his first novel, , became an international best-seller. He has published four novels which have been translated into a dozen languages. Palliser has also written for the theatre, radio, and television. His stage play, , toured Scotland in 1980. His 90 minute radio play, , was commissioned by the BBC and twice broadcast on Radio 4 in June, 1982. His short TV film, , was broadcast by the BBC and published by BBC Publications in 1991. Most recently, his short radio play, , was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 21 February 2004. He teaches occasionally for the Arvon Foundation, the Skyros Institute, London University, the London Metropolitan University, and Middlesex University. He was Writer in Residence at Poitiers University in 1997.In 1991, was awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters which is given for the best first novel published in North America. was nominated for the 2001 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.Since 1990 he has written the Introduction to a Penguin Classics edition of the Sherlock Holmes stories, the Foreword to a new French translation of published by Editions Phebus, and other articles on 19th century and contemporary fiction. He is a past member of the long-running North London Writers circle.
