Dalwich desecration

At the request of his father, master sleuth Colin Pendragon and his trusted partner, Ethan Pruitt, leave their familiar cosmopolitan London for rural Sussex County, travelling to the town of Dalwich, where a gruesome crime has desecrated the hallowed halls of Whitmore Abbey. The abbott has been slaughtered in his cell with multiple stab wounds and his tongue cut out. Although Father Demetris, the local bishop's associate, has faith that the killer must be an outsider from the village, Pendragon considers no man above suspicion, including the brooding brothers of the order. But before Pendragon and Pruitt can make much progress in their investigation, a second corpse is found--a barmaid who has been mutilated in the same way as the monk.