Peter Ackroyd is a renowned English novelist and poet, author of the bestsellers “The Trial of Elizabeth Cree”, “Hawksmoor”, “The Journal of Victor Frankenstein”, “The House of Doctor Dee”, “Chatterton”, as well as biographies of famous British people. It is no coincidence that he turned to the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, the 14th-century English poet and creator of the famous “Canterbury Tales.” Based on them, Ackroyd wrote a brilliant mystery, The Clarkenwell Tales, which became another bestseller. The author immerses the reader in medieval London, engulfed in secrets and intrigue, brutal murders and mystical incidents. Meanwhile, the madwoman from the Clerkenwell monastery - Sister Clarice, conceived and born in the underground passages under the monastery, predicts the fall of Richard II. In Ackroyd's book, there are twenty-two witnesses to those vague events - from the abbess of the monastery to the cook, each in his own way, representing them. These disparate stories are combined into a coherent picture only at the end of the book, where the author himself gives the answer to that dark story.