The Bishop's Secret

A murder in a cathedral city should be unthinkable. Yet when a man is shot through the heart in quiet Beorminster, the staid streets crackle with excitement. Amateur detectives materialise on every corner, developing elaborate theories over beer while the town gossips about its respectable pillars. Into this fray steps Ben Baltic: an elderly, weather-beaten man claiming to be a missionary returned from the South Seas. His quick, fowl-like eyes miss nothing. His hoarse, storm-tested voice tells stories he won't quite finish. He looks like a sailor who has forgotten how to swear like one. What he's really doing in Beorminster, and why he inserts himself into the murder investigation, becomes as much a mystery as the crime itself. At the centre lies Bishop Pendle, visibly disturbed, harbouring a secret that could ruin him. As the amateur sleuths close in and church hierarchy crumbles under scrutiny, Fergus Hume proves why he was the era's master of misdirection. Part social satire, part genuine thriller, this is Victorian mystery at its most devious.