Oliver Potzsch, a radio personality and screen writer in his native Bavaria, has embarked on a series of historical murder mysteries, inspired by curiosity about his own ancestor, Jakob Kuisl, the seventeenth century executioner for the town of Schongau, and his family.
In this, his second tale in the series (the first is The Hangman's Daughter, and two more are promised: The Beggar King and The Warlock), Potzsch spins a tale of dark conspiracies to recover the long lost treasure of the Knights Templar by a secret society pledged to eradicate heresy and heretics by any means necessary.
The foolish but well-loved priest of St. Lawrence Church in Altenstadt is poisoned shortly after reporting his discovery of a tomb hidden in the church crypt to his superior at the Monastery of Steingaden. The Schongau hangman, Jacob Kuisl, is set to investigate, called in by his young friend Simon Fronwieser, the son and assistant to the town doctor, who has examined the priest's corpse. It soon becomes clear, however, that there is someone who is doing his utmost to impede the hangman's investigation.
Simon, and Jacob's headstrong daughter Magdalena, continue to investigate on their own and discover the first in a series of clues, set as riddles, that identify the secret tomb in the church as the burial place of the last head of the Knights Templar order in Germany, and seem to point towards the location of the fabled lost treasure of the Templars. Simon and Magdalena's relationship is strained by the arrival of the dead priest's sister, Benedikta, who seems to be taking over the investigation and Simon's attention.
Meanwhile, Jacob is ordered to lead a posse of local citizens in apprehending a band of cutthroats and robbers who are attacking merchant convoys traveling through the sparsely populated country around Schongau. But when he succeeds in capturing the robbers, Jacob finds they are mostly poor men turned desperate by war, pestilence and famine. In exchange for the promise of a quick death, the robber chieftain tells Jacob there are strangers following and spying on him and his family.
The author has diligently researched the history of the region, and pieced together a wild but not completely implausible tale of mystery and murder. The seventeenth century German setting, with its warring religious and political factions, gross superstitions and rigid social hierarchies, is particularly well realized, even if his principal characters are suspiciously 21st century in some of their attitudes.
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