ISBN: 0-88739-252-0
360 pp.
Size: 6 x 9
Paperback Original
Price: $16.95
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Saint's Day Deaths, The
Albert Noyer
It is October on the windswept Rhine, in the middle of 406 C.E., near the Roman city of Mogontium (fictionalized Mainz). The eastern shore is dotted the glowing campfires of barbarian tribes, one of them Vandals. Though they have remained quiet for months, gathering strength, the unseasonal cold hints at a time soon when the mighty river will freeze over and become a footpath for invasion. Inside Mogontium, disaster strikes when a worker setting a Christian cross on a former temple to Jupiter is felled by lightning.
Superstitious onlookers are terrified at the god's revenge. In the days to come, Treverius and his wife Blandina, with Presbyter Modestus, struggle to discover why the subsequent murders of citizens named after martyred saints are occurring, who will be next, and how to protect potential victims who fear their lives will end in a similar martyrdom.
Bio: ALBERT NOYER is an artist and writer. He lives in New Mexico, where he is working on his next two books, The Secundus Papyrus and The Cybelene Conspiracy.
Review: "An evocative and authentically detailed historical mystery."
Booklist
"Noyer uses an intimate knowledge of the Romans, the fifth century and the theater to pull the reader down the rocky trail to the killers. He uses modern language and a tightly wrought style that develops its own, almost poetic, rhythm. A must-read for fans of Roman history and early Christianity."
Albuquerque Journal
"Mr. Noyer's knowledge of the 5th Century AD and the Romans will amaze-but this is a mystery for all time. Vandals and politics, religious fanatics and pagans, all collide and combust as the Roman Empire skids to its death and map maker Treverius must find the dissident who murders the citizens of Mogontium to seize the reigns of power."
Mary Lynn, Author of The Tavera Legacy and Autumn Harvest
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