A young Geoffrey Chaucer notices three men in London who have no right to be there. Two days later, he is shown a corpse that was found, without a mark on him, in the basement of a locked house. He recognizes it as one of the three men. Curiosity and a sense of moral obligation prompt him to explore the incident. Who was the man? Where are his companions? How did he get into a locked house...and why was it important to him to do so?

His fumbling investigations?while more underground deaths turn up?lead him into conflict with the London sheriff, a lecture on the king's finances, a large building in London that uses taxpayer money to support a single individual of no legal standing, and racist secrets from England's past.

This is the first in a proposed series that dovetails what is known about Chaucer through existing records and the culture of his time with fictional mysteries. A Notes section at the end of the book offers more detail on the people, places and events mentioned in the book. If you like learning about the Middle Ages through reading fiction, this is a book for you.