The Abbot's Last Supper(2025)

Jason Vail

At the onset of winter, the people of medieval Ludlow are looking forward to Saint Laurence's Fair, postponed from a tumultuous summer of war between King Henry and rebellious barons. Now the war is over, the barons scattered and their leader, Simon de Montfort, killed in battle, and everyone hopes that life will settle back into its peaceful routines.

But the fair is marred by the sudden death of a local abbot who apparently ate something that did not agree with him at the Broken Shield Inn.

Ludlow’s coroner, Stephen Attebrook, investigates but the evidence for the cause is thin, and at the inquest, the jurors find the abbot died of natural causes.

But the Shield’s chief competitor keeps the rumor alive that the abbot died from eating bad food at the Shield, hoping to tarnish the reputations and the business of Gilbert and Edith Wistwode, the Shield’s proprietors. To quiet the rumors, Stephen delves deeper and it becomes clear that the death was murder. Yet there are no obvious suspects.

Then the town’s physician and his housekeeper are found murdered by home invaders, who leave no trace nor a single clue as to their identity.

With the dead stacking up left and right, Stephen struggles to find the killers before they strike again — a search that leads him deep into the English countryside where deadly ambitions lurk undetected by those who do not look closely.