The children were brutally mutilated, and Adelia finds a connection through quincunxes, symbols that create the sign of the cross and include five points – four equidistant on the outside and one point in the center.Īdelia quickly accumulates a laundry list of potential suspects. When Adelia arrives and begins to investigate the bodies, she realizes quickly that she is dealing with a serial killer. When the Jews flee, Henry takes it upon himself to find the real killer, in order to restore his tax dollars and bring peace back to Cambridge. The sudden, gruesome deaths of the children in Cambridge lead the local Catholics to blame the Jews, whose high tax revenues help to keep King Henry II afloat. Because of this, Adelia has to pose as the assistant to her Muslim servant, Mansur, to avoid suspicion. Though in Sicily, where she was educated, Adelia is not an anomaly, a female doctor in England would be accused of witchcraft the moment she revealed her knowledge. For this reason, she has been given the title Mistress of the Art of Death. Adelia, trained as a pathologist at the Salerno School of Medicine, is widely known for her ability to determine cause of death and conduct basic forensic investigations. King Henry II hires Adelia to work undercover on the murders of four children in Cambridge, England.
The book, highly engaged with the period in which it is set, includes a Muslim manservant, a crusader, pilgrims from Canterbury, and in-depth historical details about the realities of life for women in different parts of Europe during the Middle Ages. Set in twelfth-century England, the book follows Sicilian forensic pathologist Adelia Aguilar after she is hired by King Henry II to investigate the deaths of four Catholic children in Cambridge, whose deaths have been blamed on local wealthy Jews. Mistress of the Art of Death is a historical crime novel by Ariana Franklin, the pen name of acclaimed journalist and historical novelist Diana Norman.
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