A Summer of Discontent

Cambridgeshire, August 1354 -- and the Bishop of Ely is accused of a most terrible murder ...

Glovere was steward to Lady Blanche de Wake, a close relative of the King. A nasty, malicious gossip, his body was discovered by the banks of the River Ouse just days after the Bishop had publicly threatened him with such an eventuality. The Bishop, though, protests his innocence and summons Cambridge proctor Brother Michael to help clear his name.

When Brother Michael and his friend, physician Matthew Bartholomew, inspect the body, they realise that Glovere didn't drown through his own drunkenness: someone stabbed him carefully and precisely in the back of the neck. And Glovere wasn't the only person to die this way: two locals, both thought to have committed suicide, have also been killed in this manner. And not only that, whoever the murderer is, he is getting better and better at his modus operandi .. .