Why was the Earl of Bayne found roaming a lonely road one chilly night in November– filthy, tattered, his eyes gouged out, and quite insane? And why, scarcely as week later, was his friend and neighbor, Sir Andrew Lester, found upon that same road and in much the same condition?
It is 1897, the year of the Old Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Gerard de Montclaire, France’s greatest detective of the Belle Epoque, is called to Scotland to investigate the sudden madness of the Earl and Laird. Local folk, around the small highland village of Aylswik, say it is the visitation of an Ancient Curse. A fiend, known since medieval times as The Horror, has returned from time to time to punish evil men, by driving them mad. Discovering the truth of The Horror will lead Montclaire and his associate, Sir Francis FitzMaurice, to uncover a great evil and to awaken memories of an old injustice.
