<p><b>First in the medieval whodunnit series set in Bampton Oxfordshire during the plague years and featuring a newly qualified surgeon.</b></p><p>Hugh of Singleton fourth son of a minor knight has been educated as a clerk usually a prelude to taking holy orders. However feeling no certain calling despite a lively faith he turns to the profession of surgeon training in Paris and then hanging out his sign in Oxford.</p><p>A local lord asks him to track the killer of a young woman whose bones have been found in the castle cesspit. She is identified as the impetuous missing daughter of a local blacksmith and her young man whom she had provoked very publicly is in due course arrested and sentenced at the Oxford assizes.</p><p>From there the tale unfolds with graphic medical procedures droll medieval wit misdirection ambition romantic distractions and a consistent underlying Christian compassion.</p>