Part of Series
Guy of Gisburne, knight and agent to Prince John, is all that stands between England and anarchy, fighting a shadow battle to protect the kingdom from those who would destroy it. Returning to England after foiling a plot to destroy Jerusalem, Guy of Gisburne is arrested and hauled to the Tower of London; John, England's regent in the absence of its monstrous King, needs his knight once more. A killer has broken into the Prince’s most secure castle in the north and left a message, drawn on the skin of one of his victims: 'the circle is closing,' signed with a handprint in blood. Is the threat genuine? Who or what is the Red Hand? Someone is killing John's men, and the obvious culprit—the most dangerous man in the Kingdom, Hood himself—has an alibi even Guy can't deny.
Author
Toby Venables is a novelist, screenwriter and lecturer in Film Studies at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. He grew up watching old Universal horror movies when his parents thought he was asleep, reading 2000 AD and obsessing about Beowulf. There was probably a bit more to it, but he can't quite remember what it was. He has since worked as a journalist and magazine editor—launching magazines in Cambridge, Peterborough, Oxford and Bristol—and once orchestrated an elaborate Halloween hoax for which he built and photographed a werewolf. He still works as a freelance copywriter, has been the recipient of a radio advertising award, and in 2001 won the Keats-Shelley Memorial Prize (both possibly due to typing errors). His first novel (for Abaddon) was The Viking Dead—a historical-zombie-SF mashup which has been described as "A fantastic mix of history, violence and horror" and "ludicrous fun."
