The Tainted Relic - Couverture souple

Five enthralling interlinked mysteries from Bernard Knight, Ian Morson, Michael Jecks, Susanna Gregory and Philip Gooden, with a prologue by Simon Beaufort.
July, 1100. Jerusalem has fallen to the Crusader armies, the Holy City lies ransacked. Amidst the chaos, an English knight named Geoffrey Mappestone is entrusted with a valuable religious relic: a fragment of the True Cross, allegedly stained with the blood of Christ. The relic is said to be cursed: anyone who touches it will meet an untimely and gruesome end as soon as it leaves their possession.
Several decades later, the Cross turns up in the possessions of a dealer - robbed and murdered en route to Glastonbury. Investigating the death, Bernard Knight's protagonist Crowner John learns of its dark history.
In Oxford in 1269, the discovery of a decapitated monk leads Ian Morson's academic sleuth William Falconer to discover a link to the relic. In 1323 in Exeter, Michael Jecks' Sir Baldwin has reason to suspect its involvement in at least five violent deaths.
Thirty years later, several suspicious deaths occur in Cambridge during a contentious debate about Holy Blood relics. Once more, as Matthew Bartholomew and Brother Michael are to discover, the tainted relic has a crucial part to play.
Finally, it's despatched to London where it falls into the hands of an unscrupulous bookdealer and where Philip Gooden's Nick Revill will determine its ultimate fate.

The anthology centres around a piece of the True Cross, allegedly stained with the blood of Christ, which falls into the hands of Geoffrey Mappestone in 1100, at the end of the First Crusade. The relic is said to be cursed and, after three inexplicable deaths, it finds its way to England in the hands of a thief.
After several decades, the relic appears in Devon, where it becomes part of a story by Bernard Knight, set in the 12th century and involving his protagonist, Crowner John. Next, it appears in a story by Ian Morson, solved by his character, the Oxford academic Falconer, and then it migrates back to Devon to encounter Sir Baldwin (Michael Jecks).
Eventually, it arrives in Cambridge, in the middle of a contentious debate about Holy Blood relics that really did rage in the 1350s, where it meets Matthew Bartholomew and Brother Michael (Susanna Gregory). Finally, it's despatched to London, where it falls into the hands of Elizabethan players and where Philip Gooden's Nick Revill will determine its ultimate fate.