Cecilian Vespers

Lawyer and bluesman Monty Collins is used to defending murderers, and occasionally investigating murders himself. But he's never come up against anything like the case of Reinhold Schellenberg, a world-renowned German theologian whose blood-drenched body has been found on the altar of a church during Vespers on Saint Cecilia's day. The controversial priest, once a top Vatican insider, provoked strong feelings in Catholics of all ideological stripes. Now those feelings have overflowed with horrifying results.

Schellenberg was in town for a course on the glorious music of the Church's past, in company with students from around the world. So Monty has before him an international cast of suspects: a flamboyant Sicilian priest who left the Vatican under a cloud; an eccentric English monk who penned scathing attacks on Schellenberg's actions during the Second Vatican Council; a disgruntled American ex-priest who can't quite let go; a church lady with a history of violence; and, most perplexing of all, a cop from the former East Berlin. The case lifts the lid on fascinating episodes of Church history, thwarted ambitions, old grudges and long-simmering disputes. Somewhere in all this lies a motive so powerful it compelled the killer to take an axe to the elderly priest, nearly severing his head from his body.