Monk's Hood

At Christmas in 1138, Shrewsbury Abbey hosts a visitor: Gervase Bonel, who has come with his wife Richildis and her son Edwin, born of an earlier marriage. After supper Bonel dies suddenly. The cause is oil pressed from monk's-hood, a plant grown in Brother Cadfael's own herbarium.

Suspicion lands on Edwin at once. He stood to lose his inheritance to his stepfather, and that gives him a motive anyone can see.

Cadfael has more at stake than the good name of his garden. Before he took the cowl and went to the Crusades, Richildis was the woman he nearly married. Old feeling pulls against his duty, and he sets out to clear the young man.

His search leads through old grudges and disputes over land, and into secrets that go back much further than anyone at the abbey expected.

The book is third in the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael. It is quieter and more intimate than a war story, with a small cast and a crime that begins at a family table. The question is whether Cadfael can prove Edwin innocent without losing his own footing.