Year of the Bat

Year of the Bat is the sixth volume in the continuing saga of Justin and Sophie Cataphlates, a very unlikely husband-and-wife crime-fighting team. The book is set in the year 1010, where Justin is now deputy treasurer of the Roman Empire (which we now call Byzantine), while Sophie has become chief lady-in-waiting to princesses Zoe and Theodora, the daughters of Emperor Constantine VIII, who, with his older brother Basil II, reigns in Constantinople.This book sees our resourceful couple voyaging to Thessalonika, where murder and intrigue await them. Back at home, Bulgarian priests are being killed in a particularly gruesome manner with a dead bat found at each scene! Justin has to interrupt his part in that investigation to conclude a commercial treaty on Cyprus with an agent of the Fatimid caliph, who continues to scheme against the empire and the couple. Throw in a family challenged by sickness and death, a lovesick princess, and court rivalries, you have a story that is almost Byzantine in its intrigues!