M.J. Jones

Disreputable Dark-Age Detective Stories — M.J. Jones grew up in an old town in an old house with a father who read history and a mother who told stories. That may explain why she took a BA in English and history, then a PhD in English literature. She has taught college English in the South and Midwest. She has also been a technical writer, an antiques dealer, and a visiting professor at Pyatigorsk [Russia] State Linguistic University. She travels often in the UK and Ireland.

Although she has published fantasy as well as contemporary and historical crime fiction, she now concentrates on crime fiction set in Anglo-Saxon England. Her story “The Witch and the Relic Thief,” published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine,” received the Mystery Writers of America’s Robert L Fish Award for Best First Short Story. It is included Crime In Its Time, a collection of her crime fiction. M.J. Jones lives and writes in Wisconsin.

Order Now!

The King’s Corpse

M.J. Jones brings a hilarious detective story from the Dark Ages into the light of day. Our disreputable hero following his grubby profession lead us on a merry chase around the English and Welsh countryside. His name’s Tryff, he comes from Wales, and he steals saints for a living. Used to, anyhow. But everybody in England’s got to have a lord, so Tryff’s become radman, mounted protection (and general dogsbody) for the abbess of a little country convent. She sends him to find the missing body of her cousin Edward, the probably murdered king of England. It’s a nigh on impossible job, but he takes it because he needs the money to buy his mother out of slavery. Tryff’s confronted with a vicious royal court, a double-crossing bard, and a revolting waker-of-the-dead. They rout him completely. Now he must look for the king’s body in Wales. With but three English nuns for help, Tryff sets off to track down not only the king’s body but also his mother, the Great Harp of King Arthur, and love besides.