Tremayne's enjoyable 22nd seventh-century historical featuring Sister Fidelma (after 2011's The Chalice of Blood) is, despite the subtitle, a sequel to the second Fidelma mystery, Shroud for the Archbishop (1995), set in Italy. On her journey home to Ireland, in a deserted Genoa street, Fidelma sees two cloaked figures assault an elderly religious with cudgels. After intervening to save the man's life, Fidelma learns that the intended victim was from the Abbey of Bobium, where her former tutor, Brother Ruadan, resides. To her dismay, Ruadan is at death's door after being attacked by adherents of the heretic Arius, who have rejected the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Her decision to visit her old mentor while she still can plunges her into the midst of a complex murder mystery. The writing and sense of place are as assured as ever, as is Tremayne's ingenuity at crafting a traditional whodunit. Agent: Charles Schlessiger, Brandt & Hochman. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

In her most dangerous outing yet, Sister Fidelma tries to break up a conspiracy in Italy. A standard-bearing historical series (The Chalice of Blood) that's been running since 1994. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Tremayne takes a chronological detour in the twentieth Sister Fidelma mystery, reaching back into the past to immediately follow the events set forth in Shroud for the Archbishop (1996), the second installment in the Fidelma canon. After departing from Rome, a shipwreck strands Fidelma in the port city of Genua (Genoa). Waylaid for an indeterminate number of days, she decides to visit the Abbey of Bobbio in the Apennine Mountains, hoping to arrive before the imminent death of her former tutor, Brother Ruadan. Attacked along the way and arriving at her destination in the middle of what appears to be a regional war waged between feuding factions of the faithful, she senses that evil is on the loose in the abbey. Utilizing the deductive skills she honed as an advocate for the Brehon courts in Ireland, she exposes a vicious conspiracy with roots in the rivalry between followers of the Nicene and the Arian Creeds. Power, politics, and religion form an unholy trinity as Tremayne embeds the intricacies of medieval church history into a compulsively readable whodunit fronted by one of the most reliably intriguing characters to grace the pages of the genre.--Flanagan, Margaret Copyright 2010 Booklist