The Unburied

 

Book 3 for RIP.

The Unburied by Charles Palliser.

Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux(November 24, 1999)
ISBN-10: 0374280355

 

There are three separate tales interwoven in this novel-three tales that could be called ghost stories, for their mysteries can never be resolved, the victims and the perpetrators never laid to rest.
Dr. Courtine, an unworldly academic, is invited to spend the days before Christmas with an old friend. Twenty years have passed since Courtine and Austin last met, and the invitation to Austin's home in the cathedral close of Thurchester is a welcome one. When Courtine arrives, Austin tells him a tale of deadly rivalry and murder two centuries old. The mystery captures Courtine's donnish imagination, as it is intended to do.
Courtine also plans to pursue his research into another unresolved and older mystery in the labyrinthine cathedral library. If he can track down an elusive eleventh-century manuscript, he hopes to dispose of a deadly rival of his own. Doubly distracted, Courtine becomes unwittingly enmeshed in the sequence of terrible events that follows his arrival, and he becomes witness to a murder that seems never to have been committed.

First off, I think I grabbed this book at a thrift shop for 1.00.  I saw the title and thought this looks like it’s a good one for RIP.. and it was!

Seriously, I wasn’t sure if I’d like this or not since the historical parts were way earlier than most I read, and I don’t generally read about “religion” history.  But, something about it grabbed me right away and although I felt lost now and then I kept picking up the book to read more. I was surprised that I liked it as much as I did.

It read rather quickly (even when I was lost) and it slightly reminded my of television when they do “cold cases”… you sure can’t get much colder then this was! lol   So it is now onward and upward to the next book! (and no.. my tbr pile never EVER seems to get smaller!)