A Mystery of Medieval Ireland - Christmas, 1509. Mara, the investigating judge of the Burren, has accepted the offer of marriage made by King Turlough. But on the eve of the marriage festivities, a man kneeling in prayer in the abbey church is violently murdered. Who could have planned to kill the king? Cut off from the outside world by heavy snow, Mara must act quickly to catch the assassin before a second death occurs.
In 1510 Ireland, a great feast is being held. Into a crowd listening to the story of Balor, the one-eyed god, come two strangers. The younger of the two, Iarla, bears a letter that claims that the wealthy Ardal O'Lochlainn is his true father, which Ardal vociferously denies. So when Iarla is found dead, with one eye missing, some think he was killed by the god--but most suspect Ardal. Mara, the Brehon--or lawgiver--of the Burren, is called to investigate....
June, 1510: the Burren, west coast of Ireland - Upon going unexpectedly into an early labour, Mara is alerted to the disappearance of Malachy, the local physician. Mystery follows birth, as shortly after the entrance of her son into the world the body of Malachy is discovered. But who stands to profit from this death and who therefore are Mara{u2019}s lead suspects? For starters there is Malachy{u2019}s new wife and her two sons, not to mention the...
April 1511: Mara is celebrating the christening of her son when she notices that three of her law students have disappeared from the party. The next morning one of them is found dead, and the other two, along with an important legal document, are missing.
Mara, Brehon of the Burren, visits Galway with her pupils where they sit in on a hearing for a poor man who faces death for stealing a meat pie, and Mara investigates a case in which the mayor's son is accused of a terrible crime.
When clan leader Garrett MacNamara's dead body is found on the road after a herd of cows has escaped, what was initially assumed to be a tragic case of him being squashed to a pulp by livestock becomes more sinister when a local claims they saw a chain attached to the mutilated body, which has now disappeared. Mara and her scholars must now investigate. Was Slaney, Garrett's wife, threatened by two new arrivals, or is she being blamed for his murder...
September, 1517: when fire destroys the famous relic of the Holy Cross in Kilnaboy church and then a pilgrim is found murdered, it is up to Mara, as Brehon of the Burren, and her law students, to find out who did such a thing - and why.
A festive celebration turns into a fight for survival when Mara and her clan come under attack... Christmas 1519 is the twentieth anniversary of King Turlough Donn's reign over the three kingdoms of Thomond, Corcomroe, and Burren, so Mara and her scholars are spending the festive period in her husband's principal court, the castle of Bunratty in Thomond. However, in the midst of celebrations, the Brehon of Thomond is found dead, slumped across a table...
When Mara, Brehon of the Burren, is summoned to the sandy beach of Fanore, on the western fringe of the kingdom of the Burren, she sees a sight that she has never witnessed before during her thirty years as law-enforcer and investigating magistrate: a dead man lying in a boat with no oars. Immediately her scholars jump to the conclusion that the man has been found guilty of kin-murder. The Brehon sentence for this worst of all crimes is that the murderer...
Mara, Brehon of the Burren, must battle superstitious beliefs and fears as she sets out to solve a brutal murder. When a woman's body is discovered, strangled and bound with rope to the stone torso of Fár Breige, the ancient stone god which stands sentinel above the haunted caves and ancient fortifications of the Atlantic cliffs, the locals believe it was the god who killed her. In life, Clodagh O'Lochlainn had been a disgrace...
An unfairly harsh judge meets a gruesome end in the latest intriguing Burren mystery. It was a macabre ending for an unjust judge: his throat slit by a sharp knife; his body stuffed into a lobster pot and left beneath a powerful jet of water shooting up through the cliffs from the turbulent Atlantic. When Mara, Brehon of the nearby kingdom of the Burren, comes to investigate, she knows that her first suspects have to be the five young men who had...
