The Dark Monk is the second book in Hangman's Daughter, the
million-copy bestselling series.
1660: Winter has settled thick over a sleepy village in the Bavarian
Alps, ensuring every farmer and servant is indoors on 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, Oliver Pötzsch takes us on a whirlwind tour through the
occult hiding places of Bavaria's ancient monasteries. Once again based
on prodigious historical research into Pötzsch's family tree, The Dark
Monk brings to life an unforgettable, compassionate hangman and his
tenacious daughter, painting a robust tableau of seventeenth-century
Bavaria and quickening our pulses with a gripping, mesmerizing mystery.
