ABOUT THE BOOK

There are three separate tales interwoven in this novel - three tales of murder and duplicity. They could all be called ghost stories, for the mysteries they relate 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 from his student days. 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, for reasons other than the simple renewal of an old acquaintance. On the night Courtine arrives, Austin tells him the story of the town ghost, a story of deadly rivalry and murder two centuries old. The mystery captures Courtine's donnish imagination, as perhaps it is intended to do.

Courtine's real reason for the visit is to pursue his research into another unresolved and even older mystery in the labyrinthine Cathedral library. If he can track down an elusive 11th century manuscript, the existence of which only he believes in, he hopes to dispose of a deadly rival of his own. Doubly distracted, Courtine is unwittingly enmeshed in the sequence of terrible events which follow his arrival, and becomes a witness to a murder that seems never to have been committed.

Charles Palliser was educated in the UK and America. He has taught modern literature and creative writing at universities in Glasgow, London, and the USA. Since 1990 he has been a full-time writer and he now lives in London.