Alan Gordon Books in Order

The death of Duke Orsino sends Feste back to Illyria disguised as a merchant. Working for the secretive Fools’ Guild, the jester investigates a suspicious loss and revisits the intrigues surrounding figures from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Newly married jesters Theophilos and Viola travel to Constantinople after the Fools’ Guild’s agents disappear. A claimant to the Byzantine throne and gathering European forces complicate their search as they try to avert war and survive political intrigue.

As crusaders besiege Constantinople in 1203, jesters Theophilos and Viola work to prevent disaster. The murder of an apparently ordinary silk merchant draws them into an investigation whose hidden political stakes could determine the city’s survival.

Traveling across the Alps, Theophilos recounts an earlier mission during the Third Crusade. His adventures with the jester Scarlet in Tyre involve Jerusalem’s queen, competing political interests, and a murder amid the struggles surrounding Richard the Lionheart’s campaign.

Hiding from papal forces in the Black Forest, the Fools’ Guild listens to Father Gerald recount a mission to Denmark. His tale of rival kings and a jester called Yorick reveals a version of Hamlet’s tragedy with secrets Theophilos recognizes.

Theophilos and Claudia seek a former guild member’s help against Pope Innocent III, but a monk’s murder interrupts their visit. A message written in blood sends them into the abbot’s past, where old events threaten their mission and lives.

Theophilos arrives in Toulouse to persuade its bishop to retire in favor of a friendlier successor. When a moneylender who quarreled with the bishop is found dead in a tanner’s vat, solving the murder becomes essential to protecting the guild.

A stranger claiming to be the count’s brother arrives in Toulouse, then becomes implicated in a prostitute’s murder. Theophilos investigates the man’s identity and the crime, navigating aristocratic claims and political intrigue that complicate the apparent evidence.