The Tainted Relic: An Historical Mystery

In many ways, The Tainted Relic is five separate novellas all created with a single theme. An interesting concept, five different writers each take a period of time and then build a story around an alleged splinter of Jesus' cross that is stained with his blood. An invaluable possession in the medieval period of the stories, it carries with it a curse that leaves everyone that comes in contact with it dead. The stories are loosely connected across time, and provide for some good casual reading.

I read Tainted Relic and Sword of Shame, and am looking forward to other books by this excellent set of authors!

These authors are doing a great job with the stories. The story flows well from one author to the next.Great Job!!

This is the first work in historical murder mystery I have ever seen with multiple authors writing on the same theme. While not all the authors meet the level of Jecks or Knight, the work as a whole still deserves 5 stars. You may not like parts of this "meal" but you won't leave hungry for a treat in murder mystery. It starts in one time period and ends ... well buy it and read it. They don't pay me, I purchase their works when not reading academic works, etc. I am also disabled veteran who needs a break from the other materials mentioned. It was my good fortune to find Jecks and Knight and now these other friends of theirs. There are too many writing "murder mystery" and getting away with their writing and folks like these not getting the credit due them.

'The Tainted Relic' is collaboration between the 'Medieval Murderers' collective of murder mystery writers (namely Simon Beaufort, Michael Jecks, Susanna Gregory, Bernard Knight, Ian Morson, Philip Gooden). The relic in question is (allegedly) a piece of the true cross taken from Jerusalem after the Second Crusade took the city in July 1100. The Crusaders' victory is marked by indiscriminate slaughter of Jews and Moslems living in the city, and the Arab guardian of this relic curses it after finding that the Crusaders have butchered his family and are about to cut him down. The relic brings death to those who possess it, and travels through the medieval timeline in England, encountering the different characters and eras which have been used by the Medieval Murderers in their respective novels. What makes this novel particularly interesting -apart from the joint author aspect- is that you can read it as a sequence of murder mysteries, or you can read it as a horror novel. Or perhaps on a more esoteric level,as a comment on the nature of Medieval Christendom, forever corrupted by the brutality of July 1100.