To Edgar’s and Catherine’s displeasure, when they arrive home, they find that their house has not been aired out, nor has Catherine’s cousin, who was sent on ahead to notify the servants of their homecoming, arrived at the house. In fact, Solomon is nowhere to be found.

What Catherine and Edgar find waiting for them, however, once the house is unboarded, is most unpleasant. The partially decayed corpse of a Templar Knight is found behind the locked door of the counting room. Because the corpse wears the Templar uniform, Edgar and Catherine ask the Templars to remove the corpse and decide it to be no longer their problem. Unfortunately, a pall of suspicion has been cast around Catherine and her family because her converted father, Herbert, has renounced Christianity and returned to the roots of his ancestors and Judaism. Herbert claims to have left Paris, but Catherine feels he is still in the area, putting everyone in grave danger.

In addition to Catherine and Edgar and the Knights Templar searching for the identity of the dead man, a young couple, Clemence and Lambert, is inquiring as to the whereabouts of their fathers who both left for the Holy Wars, but Clemence’s seems to have vanished. The innocents run into the wrong people first and have their heads filled with images of devils and wizards and the fear that Catherine and Edgar are indeed vehicles of evil. Once the pair learns to trust Catherine and Edgar, all the parts of the mystery slowly come into focus and start to untangle until all the truths are finally revealed.

To Wear a White Cloak is a finely crafted historical mystery filled with an incredible amount of period detail. Readers hesitant about approaching a mystery set in this time period should not fear. The book explains everyday life as well as the political events surrounding them and the social mores of the time. The details are written in a way that make Catherine and Edgar’s lives as familiar as modern life.

The characters Sharan Newman has created have become quite real over the course of the series and new readers to this book are given enough insight into the characters’ pasts as to understand why they do some of the things they do. Catherine is a strong, admirable woman, a fitting heroine for the twelfth century - or any century.

--Jennifer Monahan Winberry