The Counterfeit Madam
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Gil Cunningham had hoped that the first time he set foot in the brothel on the Drygate it would also be his last, but by the time all was settled he felt quite at home within its artfully painted chambers.
The bawdy house, along with the neighbouring property and two more in Strathblane, are all part of a deal offered to Gil and his wife Alys by the forceful Dame Isabella. Her proposal also involves Gil's young ward, and matters are further confused by an outbreak of counterfeit coins in Glasgow, which Gil has been ordered to investigate.
Then Dame Isabella is found dead in strange circumstances, and the more Gil pursues the cause of her death, the more false coins he finds. And then the bawd-mistress, the enigmatic Madam Xanthe, gets involved and rumours circulate that the Devil is abroad in Strathblane. By the time Gil and Alys have untangled matters, some very surprising - and sinister - thing have come to light...
Praise for Pat McIntosh's Gil Cunnigham series:
'McIntosh's characterisations and period detail are first rate' - Publishers Weekly, starred review
'The next Cunningham adventure is to be welcomed' - Historical Novels Review
''Will do for Glasgow in the fifteenth century what Ellis Peters and her Brother Cadfael did for Shrewsbury in the twelfth' - Mystery Readers Journal
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The provost of Glasgow asks Gil Cunningham, the archbishop's quaester, to track down the source of counterfeit coins flooding the area in McIntosh's suspenseful eighth mystery set in 15th-century Scotland (after 2010's A Pig of Cold Vision). Gil's workload is doubled when Dame Isabella Torrance, a crusty old woman, is murdered by someone who inserted a nail in her ear. Isabella re-entered Gil's life after many years a short time before to propose a land transaction that would have exchanged two plots for the abandonment of Gil's foster-son's inheritance claim. The investigator suspects that the death may be connected with the presence of a brothel on one of the properties Isabella was seeking to barter. Gil and his wife, Alys, make a winning pair, and McIntosh deftly balances plot and period detail, though some might lament the lack of a glossary for archaic words like sasine.
