The Grim Reaper — Bernard Knight

Coroner Sir John chases down a serial killer with a taste for Biblical justice in this suspenseful instalment in the Crowner John medieval mystery series, set in twelfth-century England.


1195. County coroner Sir John de Wolfe is summoned to inspect a corpse in Exeter's cathedral precinct. Money-lender Aaron of Salisbury has been found dead, his head enveloped in a brown leather money-bag, a scrap of folded parchment clutched in his hand. On it is written: ‘And Jesus went into the temple and overthrew the tables of the money-changers.'


This is just the beginning of a strange series of murders in which an apt biblical text is left at the scene of the crime. Setting out to track down a literate and Bible-learned killer in an age when only one percent of the population can read or write, Sir John quickly deduces that he is looking for a priest. But with over twenty-five parish churches in Exeter, the pool of suspects includes more than a hundred clerics â€" and if Sir John doesn't act fast, the homicidal clergyman may soon strike again . . .