The Clerk's Gospel

In the ash-choked Republic of Astrovia, a retired filing clerk named Viktor Sollberger stands trial for his role in the Saint Maurus Fraternity's brutal purification campaigns. Inspector Matthias Falk, a weary classicist who solves acrostics in his head, pieces together a truth buried in monastic archives: the killing was never called murder, but a holy tithe of souls. Dexterian in its slow burn, the novel asks whether a man who only ever wielded a stamp and a prayer can be guilty of genocide when his faith told him he was saving the world.