When controversial German theologian's blood-stained body is found on the altar of a church during Vespers on Saint Cecelia's Day, lawyer and bluesman Monty Collins is called in to investigate.

"How did an unmusical saint come to be portrayed as a musician and become the patron saint of musicians and music? Until the beginning of the fifteenth century, Saint Cecilia was perceived as one of many virgin martyrs, with no obvious musical skills or interests. During the next two centuries, however, she inspired many musical works written in her honor and a vast number of paintings that depicted her singing or playing an instrument. Why did so many composers start writing music that honored her as their patron saint? In this book, John A. Rice argues that Cecilia's association with music came about in several stages, involving Christian liturgy, visual arts, and music, and fostered by interactions between artists, musicians, and their patrons and the transfer of visual and musical traditions from northern Europe to Italy. The initial chapters explore the cult of the saint in Medieval times and through the sixteenth century, when, starting in 1502, the first guilds in the Low Countries and France chose Cecilia as their patron. The book then turns to the music and the explosion of polyphonic vocal works written in Cecilia's honor between 1530 and 1620 by the most celebrated composers in Europe, as well as a group of about fifty Cecilian Renaissance motets, mostly by Northern European composers, which are brought together here for the first time. The book also explores the wealth of visual representations of Saint Cecilia especially during the Italian Renaissance, among which Raphael's 1515 painting, "The Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia," is but the most famous example, and concludes with the development of the cult of Cecilia in England. Thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated, Saint Cecilia in the Renaissance is the definitive portrait of Saint Cecilia as a figure of musical inspiration"--

Winner of the 2019 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel As 1995 dawns in the North of Ireland, Belfast is a city of army patrols, bombed-out buildings, and “peace walls” segregating one community from the other. But the IRA has called a ceasefire. So, it’s as good a time as any for Monty Collins and Father Brennan Burke to visit the city: Monty to do a short gig in a law firm, and Brennan to reconnect with family. And it’s a good time for Brennan’s cousin Ronan to lay down arms and campaign for election in a future peacetime government. But the past is never past in Belfast, and it rises up to haunt them all: a man goes off a bridge on a dark, lonely road; a rogue IRA enforcer is shot; and a series of car bombs remains an unsolved crime. The trouble is compounded by a breakdown in communication: Brennan knows nothing about the secrets in a file on Monty’s desk. And Monty has no idea what lies behind a late-night warning from the IRA. With a smoking gun at the center of it all, Brennan and Monty are on a collision course and will learn more than they ever wanted to know about what passes for law in 1995 Belfast. An inscription on a building south of the Irish border says it all: “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”