Gender and Petty Crime in Late Medieval England - The Local Courts in Kent 1460 - 1560
A large proportion of late medieval people were accused of some kind of misdemeanour in borough, manorial or ecclesiastical courts at some stage in their lives. The records of these courts bring us as close to ordinary townspeople and villagers as it is possible to get, and show what behaviour was considered reprehensible in men and women.
Montauk lawyer Tom Dunleavy's client list is woefully small - occasional real estate closings barely keep him in paper clips. When he is hired to defend a local man accused in a triple murder that has the East Hampton world in an uproar, he knows that he has found the case of his lifetime.
The narrator of Death is a Lonely Business is a writer living in Venice, California, where the local carnival pier is being demolished. He discovers the body of Willie Smith, underwater and trapped in a disused lion cage. Then a strange shadowy figure begins appearing in hallways and outside windows at night and the number of murders increases. He teams with local police detective Elmo Crumley - reluctantly, at first, on Crumley's part - to solve the case. The only clues they have are the writer's intuition, articles that go missing from the deceased's residences, and a blind man's keen sense of smell.
As a country club is due to open on Witches' Hill, a body is discovered with its throat cut. The next day a fragment of a legendary witches' curse upon anyone who desecrates their place of worship is sent to a local paper. As Robert Skinner begins his grizzly investigation, a second murder occurs.
The devilish Chip Harrison--young, broke, and girlless--stumbles on a discarded bus ticket and finds himself in South Carolina, where he becomes the local sheriff's protege and falls in love with a preacher's daughter.
