the Mystery of Midnight Morris Dancers: 12

When Reverend Fairweather witnesses ghostly figures morris dancing in his churchyard at midnight, he dismisses it as a trick of the light - until he discovers that a priceless medieval chalice has vanished from the church.Private detectives Sherman Holmes and John Garden are called in and quickly find themselves drawn into a mystery that stretches back four centuries. A pattern of church thefts across the county, each preceded by midnight dancing. A banned dance that hasn't been performed since 1823. A scientist executed for witchcraft whose life's work was hidden in pieces across the English countryside. And a network of underground tunnels connecting it all.As Holmes investigates the folklore and Garden deploys his technical expertise, they uncover a web of suspects: a pompous morris squire with a family secret, a professor whose research has been stolen, a New Age mystic guarding ancestral documents, and a metal detectorist who may hold the key to everything without knowing it. With Garden going undercover as "Joanne" to infiltrate the local women's morris side, and Holmes battling his claustrophobia in ancient tunnels, the investigation leads them toward a once-in-two-centuries astronomical alignment - and a hidden underground observatory that someone will stop at nothing to find.The twelfth book in the Holmes & Garden series combines a classic whodunnit with hidden history, gender politics in folk tradition, and the enduring question of what we owe the past - all wrapped in the gentle comedy of a village where news travels faster than light, a cat named Colin destroys everything he touches, and the most dangerous weapon is a morris stick.

Pagina's: 266, Paperback, JDI Publications