The Bone Relic - The Andalusian Trilogy, #2

THE BONE RELIC

Dwell not upon thy weariness, thy strength shall be

            according to the measure of thy desire.

                                                                                --Arab Proverb

The arm bone of the prophet Muhammad is stolen from the Great Mosque of Cordoba. Solomon, an amateur sleuth renowned for finding missing objects and persons, is asked to recover the relics and return them to their former resting place in the treasury of the mosque. Foreign Minister Shaprut possesses two important clues.  As a result of a scuffle with guards, one of the perpetrators of the sacrilege left shoe behind in his haste to escape. And a message scrawled on a wall of the Great Mosque might be a valuable clue.   

The assignment gives the non-Muslim investigator a rare opportunity He is given special privileges and allowed inside the Great Mosque of Cordoba to interview the residing Imam in an effort to discover more clues leading to the whereabouts of the relic's abductors. The Imam shares the story of the kidnapping of The Black Stone of Mecca in hopes it will provide insights into the minds of thieves.

Catholic Bishop Racemundo enlightens Solomon as to the nature of relics and the investigator's confidant, Layla the Courtesean, provides valuable information about the origins of the  shoe recovered by the guardians of the Great Mosque.

Solomon's search for the  precious holy relics requires a perilous journey, from romantic Cordoba to the Andalusian ports of Seville and Cadiz (Europe's oldest city), and leads him into a murky world where desire and need drive the intense competition for holy artifacts.

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