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Paul Doherty - Hugh Corbett Series

Posted By: naag
Paul Doherty - Hugh Corbett Series

Paul Doherty - Hugh Corbett Series
Paul Doherty | 1986-2010 | English | ASIN: N\A | EPUB | 7 MB

1 - Satan in St Mary's
1284 and Edward I is battling a traitorous movement founded by the late Simon de Montfort, the rebel who lost his life at the Battle of Evesham in 1258. The Pentangle, the movement's underground society whose members are known to practice the black arts, is thought to be behind the apparent suicide of Lawrence Duket, one of the King's loyal subjects, in revenge for Duket's murder of one of their supporters. The King, deeply suspicious of the affair, orders his wily Chancellor, Burnell, to look into the matter. Burnell chooses a sharp and clever clerk from the Court of King's Bench, Hugh Corbett, to conduct the investigation. Corbett - together with his manservant, Ranulf, late of Newgate - is swiftly drawn into the tangled politics and dark and dangerous underworld of medieval London. Will Corbett be able to find the truth before London is overrun by the Pentangle? The first thrilling book in the acclaimed Hugh Corbett series.

2 - Crown in Darkness
1286 and on a storm-ridden night King Alexander III of Scotland is riding across the Firth of Forth to meet his beautiful French bride Yolande. He never reaches his final destination as his horse mysteriously slips, sending them both crashing to their death on cruel rocks. The Scottish throne is left vacant of any real heir and immediately the great European princes and the powerful nobles of Alexander's kingdom start fighting for the glittering prize.
The Chancellor of England, Burnell, ever mindful of the interest his king, Edward I, has in Scotland, sends his faithful clerk, Hugh Corbett, to report on the chaotic situation at the Scottish court. Concerned that a connection exists between the king's death and those now desirous of taking the Scottish throne, Corbett is drawn into a maelstrom of intrigue, conspiracy and danger. Will Corbett be able to discover the truth behind the King's death?

3 - Spy in Chancery
Edward I of England and Philip IV of France are at war. Philip, by devious means, has managed to seize control of the English duchy of Aquitaine in France, and is now determined to crush Edward. King Edward suspects that his enemy is being aided by a spy in the English court and commissions his chancery clerk, Hugh Corbett, to trace and, if possible, destroy the traitor. Corbett's mission brings him into danger on both land and at sea, and takes him to Paris, and its dangerous underworld, and then to hostile Wales. Unwillingly he is drawn into the murky undercurrents of international politics in the last decade of the thirteenth century. And the spy will stop at nothing, not even murder, to keep his identity secret.

4 - The Angel of Death
Medieval London comes vividly to life in this fourth investigation by Hugh Corbett, chief clerk to England's Edward I. In January 1299, at High Mass with the king and other nobles, Walter de Montfort, the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, falls dead, poisoned. Edward, whose recent ill-received attempts to tax the church to raise funds for his wars against France and rebel Scots make him a suspect, orders Corbett to investigate. With the aid, and often hindrance, of his dissolute servant Ranulf, Corbett discovers that the victim owned a house of prostitution and served as the fence for a gang of outlaws. The clerk comes to suspect, however, that despite the Dean's criminal activities, he was not the intended victim. Finding the key to the mystery in the ritual of the mass, Corbett gets his answer after another murder, although he himself almost perishes. Like previous Corbett mysteries, this one is based on a true incident, with Doherty's depictions of medieval character and manners of thought, from the highest to the lowest in the land, ringing true.

5 - The Prince of Darkness
It is 1301 and a fragile peace exists between Edward of England and Philip IV of France. In the fetid alleys and slums of London and Paris it is a different matter. Here the secret agents of both countries still fight their own, silent, deadly battles. The Prince of Wales wallows in luxury under the sinister influence of his favourite, Gaveston, who has secret political ambitions to dominate the young prince and the English crown. These scandals are threatened with exposure when Lady Belmont, the prince's former mistress, is found dead, her neck broken, at the foot of a nunnery's steps. Was it suicide? An accident? Or malicious murder Edward turns to his master spy, Hugh Corbett, to solve the mystery. In doing so, Corbett must face the deadly rivalry of his French counterpart, the murderous rage of Gaveston and the silent threats of assassins. He must also contend with the lies and silken deceits of his own master.

6 - Murder Wears a Cowl
In early 1302 a violent serial killer lurks in the city of London, slitting the throats of prostitutes.And when Lady Somerville, one of the Sisters of St Martha, is murdered in the same barbaric fashion, her death is closely followed by that of Father Benedict in suspicious circumstances. Edward of England turns to his trusted master clerk, Hugh Corbett, to reveal the identity of the bloodthirsty assassin. Joining Corbett on his mission are his devious manservant Ranulf and his faithful horseman Maltote. In the dark, fetid streets of the city and in the desolate abbey grounds, they encounter danger and deceit at every turn. Only Ragwort, the mad beggar, has seen the killer strike, and the one clue that Corbett has to help him is Lady Somerville's cryptic message: 'Calcullus non facit monachum ' - the cowl does not make the monk.

7 - The Assassin in the Greenwood
In the seventh action-packed novel of the series, medieval sleuth Hugh Corbett is despatched to investigate murder and mystery in Nottingham. Most of the "bloody chess game" is played in or near Nottingham, where the sheriff has been poisoned and a masked bandit has sliced off the fingertips of King Edward's tax collector. Has Robin Hood, pardoned by the king, returned to Sherwood Forest after fighting for the Crown in Scotland? But what a changed Robin! He and his outlaws, no longer heroes to the common folk, now slaughter savagely and with little discrimination. The king sends Corbett, his trusted senior clerk and Keeper of the Secret Seal, to investigate the sheriff's slaying. At the same time, Corbett is dodging Achitophel, an elusive assassin sent after him by King Philip of France, and struggling to solve a captured cipher that holds the key to where in Flanders Philip will attack England's allies, the Flemings.

8 - The Song of a Dark Angel
November 1302, and Sir Hugh Corbett, Edward I's Keeper of the Secret Seal, together with his manservant, Ranulf, and messenger, Maltote, are sent to Mortlake Manor on the Norfolk coast to confront an evil rarely seen before. A man's headless corpse, its head impaled on a pole, has been found on a beach and the pretty young wife of a local baker has been found hanging from a gallows. The scene is set for more gruesome deaths and Corbett soon realises that the icy wastes of Norfolk, where the eerie song of the Dark Angel wind chills those that live in the small villages along the coast, are just as treacherous as the silken intrigue at the royal court or the violence of London's fetid alleyways…


9 - Satan's Fire
In 1303 the Old Man of the Mountain remembers back to when he nearly killed Edward of England almost thirty years before. He never forgets his prey – and now decides to release an imprisoned leper knight to avenge old grievances.

One windswept evening a few months later two nuns are hurrying to their mother house in York when they smell the sickly odour of burning human flesh. Rounding the corner, they confront the macabre sight of a man being hungrily consumed by a roaring fire.

News of this grisly death meets Edward I of England as he arrives in York for secret negotiations with the leaders of the military Order of the Temple. His unease deepens for, as he enters the city, a would-be regicide attempts to murder him. When the assassin, wearing the livery of the Templar Order, is found dead – having been engulfed by a mysterious fire – Edward immediately enlists the help of his Keeper of the Secret Seal, Sir Hugh Corbett, to investigate.

10 - The Devil's Hunt
IN THE GOLDEN SUMMER OF 1303, the severed heads of beggars - are found, tied by their hair, to the trees in the woods outside Oxford. In the city itself John Copsale, Regent of Sparrow Hall, has been found dead in his bed. Some claim he died in his sleep, others whisper that he was murdered by the mysterious 'Bell Man'. Then the college librarian and archivist, Robert Ascham, is discovered with a crossbow bolt in his chest. What was he trying to write on a piece of manuscript found lying beside him? Are the Regent's death and Ascham's murder the result of a terrible curse of ghosts who still walk seeking vengeance? And who is the Bell Man – that mysterious, anonymous writer who posts treasonous bills and letters on church doors all over the city?

King Edward, hearing of the seething unrest in Oxford, arrives unannounced at Sir Hugh Corbett's country manor, and insists that Sir Hugh go to Oxford to resolve the murderous mysteries which threaten to plunge the city – and university – into chaos. And when the King commands, few can resist, even if it means knowingly entering a dangerous and violent world…

11 - The Demon Archer
The death of Lord Henry Fitzalan on the feast of St Matthew 1303 is a matter widely reported but little mourned. Infamous for his lecherous tendencies, his midnight trysts with a coven of witches and his boundless self-interest, he was a man of few friends. So when Hugh Corbett is asked to bring his murderer to justice it is not a matter of finding a suspect but of choosing between them.

immediate suspicion falls on Lord Henry's chief verderer, Robert Verlian. His daughter had been the focus of Lord Henry's roving eye in the weeks before his death and he was not a man to take no for an answer. But the culprit could just as easily be Sir William, the dead man's younger brother. It is no secret that Sir William covets the Fitzalan estate – but would he kill to inherit it? The possibilities are endless, but the truth is more terrible than anyone could have imagined …

12 - The Treason of the Ghosts
Five years ago in the village of Melford, a local lord was executed for spate of vicious murders. But now other young girls have been found violated and garrotted, and the dead lord's son, Maurice, insists that a miscarriage of justice has taken place. Meanwhile, someone who believes in Sir Roger Chapeleys' innocence is exacting their own kind of justice as, one by one, the leaders of the jury which sent the lord to the gibbet are brutally murdered.

Edward of England sends his chief clerk to Melford to discover the truth. Hugh Corbett, with his faithful servants Ranulf and Chanson, faces the difficult task of unveiling the secrets of a distrustful community tormented by murder. Seeking connections between the deaths, Corbett realises that for many years a serial killer has terrorised the villagers. But Corbett believes there could now be two killers, one preying on corrupt jurors, the other on vulnerable women, and anyone else who might stumble across his true identity…

13 - Corpse Candle
The brothers of the abbey of St Martin's-in-the-Marsh usually pay little heed to the tales of robber baron Sir Geoffrey Mandeville's ghost galloping through the Lincolnshire fens with a retinue of ghastly horsemen. They may hear the shrill blast of a phantom hunting horn, or see the corpse candles glowing in the dark, but none really accepts the peasants' belief that these flickering lights can forewarn men of their own deaths.

The monks are protected by the monastery's high wall and by their powerful abbot – a friend of King Edward I – and, although their leaders sometimes argue over the abbey's future, their lives are peaceful and comfortable. But then Abbot Stephen is found murdered in his chamber, with the door and windows locked from the inside, and Sir Hugh Corbett, Keeper of the King's Seal, arrives to investigate…

14 - The Magician's Death
ROGER BACON'S BOOK OF SECRETS is coveted in both France and England, but the brilliant, controversial scholar has concealed his discoveries behind a mystifying code. When Sir Hugh Corbett, spy master to the English King Edward I, instructs his agents to prise the book from its hiding-place in Paris, they succeed only at a violent and bloody cost. Next, a meeting between the scholars of both countries is demanded by Philip IV of France to discuss whether the code can ever be broken, and Edward, bound by his recent peace treaty with Philip, is forced to agree.

THE MEETING TAKES PLACE at Corfe Castle, which soon becomes a place of murder, mystery and mayhem. Young women from the castle are being slain, the outlaw Horehound is appalled at the horrors he has seen in the nearby forest – and then two of the French scholars die in sinister circumstances. At the head of the English clerks, Corbett has to thread this murderous maze whilst, at the same time, trying to decipher the secrets of one of England's greatest scholars.

15 - The Waxman Murders
October, 1300. War cog "The Waxman" is bound for Orwell. Its master, Adam Blackstock, is taking an ancient manuscript, "The Cloister Map," to be deciphered by his brother. But Blackstock is slaughtered when ships flying the colors of the Hanseatic League overrun the cog. Three years later, Wilhelm Von Paulents, a representative of the League, arrives in Canterbury, in possession of "The Cloister Map." Sir Hugh Corbett is sent by the king to negotiate for ownership. But less than 24 hours after their arrival, Von Paulents and his travelling companions have been barbarously assassinated. It falls to Corbett to investigate and as he once again enters the world of shadows, he soon finds his own life under threat…

16 - Nightshade
An unscrupulous manor lord has reneged on his promise to hand over a priceless ornate cross stolen from the Templars during the Crusades. Furthermore, he has massacred as heretics fourteen members of a religious order. The King sends Hugh Corbett, devoted emissary of King Edward I to Mistleham in his stead…

17 - The Mysterium
In The Mysterium, a new installment in the “deliciously suspenseful” Hugh Corbett Medieval Mystery series by P.C. Doherty, Sir Hugh Corbett is ordered to investigate the murder of a Chief Justice in the King’s Court.