The Madonna of Darkness: A Large-Print 1930S Golden-Age-Style 'Reverend Shaw' Mystery

Suffolk, England, 1936. The Reverend Alwyn Jones has made several enemies since becoming Rector of Addenham Magna. But nobody expected he would be so unpopular as to be bludgeoned to death in his own vestry during a church fete. And nobody noticed the disappearance of an old painting from the church on the same day as the murder.

Nobody, that is, apart from Reverend Lucian Shaw -vicar, former army chaplain and part-time sleuth. While the police follow theories of their own, Shaw begins to realise there is a connection between Jones' death and the disappearance of the painting. With the help of his art-curator son, Shaw is able to find the painting and establish its terrifying provenance -it is no ordinary work of art, but an object of such value and such sinister attraction that in attempting to obtain it, men have been driven to madness- and to murder. And now those men are coming for Reverend Shaw.