December 1354 - Cambridge may be preparing for the season of festivities, but physician Mathew Bartholomew is about to spend the twelve days of Christmas searching for a killer . . .
The winter of 1354 is as bad as anyone can remember: as heavy snow smothers the countryside, ice chokes the flourmills, causing the price of food to spiral upwards once more. But however cold the weather gets, for two individuals it is about to get even colder. A drunken attempt at blackmail by Norbert Tulyet, errant scholar of the Franciscan Hostel of Ovyng, leaves him dead at the hostel door. And in St Michael's church a second unidentified body hold an even greater mystery.
For Bartholomew and university proctor Brother Michael, the murders would be difficult to solve at any normal time of the year. But now they've got to deal with the students electing their annual Lord of Misrule, ushering in a period of chaos.
