[Justin de Quincy 02] • Cruel as the Grave

Melangell had only just marked her fifteenth birthday. In the street where she, her father, and her little sister boarded, she had been loved by all, as much for her kind heart and generous nature as for her curly black hair and slender good looks. But someone had taken advantage of that sweetness, leaving her dead in St. Mary Magdalene's churchyard, her ripped bodice testimony to her struggle, a bloodstained stone cross the solitary witness to her death. Justin de Quincy was the queen's man, working on behalf of Eleanor of Aquitaine. His duty was clear: to find her missing son, Richard Lionheart, and prevent Prince John from usurping Richard's throne. What had he to do with a commonplace murder, with the death of a poor man's child? But little by little, Justin comes to feel the force of the dead girl, perhaps even to love her as well, and he soon commits to finding her killer. But can he also bring him to justice?