THE ANTICIPATED FOLLOWUP TO THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER, THE HANGMAN'S
DAUGHTER
1660: Winter has settled thick over a sleepy village in the Bavarian
Alps, ensuring every farmer and servant is indoors the night a parish
priest discovers he's been poisoned. As numbness creeps up his body, he
summons the last of his strength to scratch a cryptic sign in the frost.
Following a trail of riddles, hangman Jakob Kuisl; his headstrong
daughter Magdalena; and the town physician's son team up with the
priest's aristocratic sister to investigate. What they uncover will lead
them back to the Crusades, unlocking a troubled history of internal
church politics and sending them on a chase for a treasure of the
Knights Templar.
But they're not the only ones after the legendary fortune. A team of
dangerous and mysterious monks is always close behind, tracking their
every move, speaking Latin in the shadows, giving off a strange,
intoxicating scent. And to throw the hangman off their trail, they have
ensured he is tasked with capturing a band of thieves roving the
countryside attacking solitary travelers and spreading panic.
Delivering on the promise of the international bestseller The Hangman's
Daughter, once again based on prodigious historical research into
Pötzsch's family tree, The Dark Monk takes us on a whirlwind tour
through the occult hiding places of Bavaria's ancient monasteries,
bringing to life an unforgettable compassionate hangman and his
tenacious daughter, painting a robust tableau of a seventeenth-century
Bavaria still negotiating the lasting impacts of war, and quickening our
pulses with a gripping, mesmerizing mystery.
