Sign-In
Cart
"The York Riddle": (Series 1, Book 8)
Paperback
Please select the version of book you would like to purchase.
ISBN13: 9798244528596
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Feb 6 2026
Pages: 270
Weight: 0.80
Height: 0.57 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Feb 6 2026
Pages: 270
Weight: 0.80
Height: 0.57 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The York Riddle (Book Eight)
York Minster has stood for centuries as a monument to faith, continuity, and stone-bound memory.
It was never meant to become a crime scene.
When a senior bishop is found murdered inside the Minster's Chapter House, Detective Chief Inspector Evelyn Holloway is drawn into an investigation that resists every familiar category. The weapon is ceremonial. The violence precise. And carved into the victim's hand is a Latin phrase that is neither prayer nor scripture-but something far older, colder, and deliberately chosen.
York Minster has stood for centuries as a monument to faith, continuity, and stone-bound memory.
It was never meant to become a crime scene.
When a senior bishop is found murdered inside the Minster's Chapter House, Detective Chief Inspector Evelyn Holloway is drawn into an investigation that resists every familiar category. The weapon is ceremonial. The violence precise. And carved into the victim's hand is a Latin phrase that is neither prayer nor scripture-but something far older, colder, and deliberately chosen.
What begins as an ecclesiastical homicide quickly fractures into something else entirely.
Hidden within medieval manuscripts, choir stalls, and sealed reliquaries, Holloway uncovers traces of a covert intelligence system that predates modern espionage yet remained active throughout the Cold War. A system that used stone, ritual, and belief as infrastructure. A system designed not to transmit information openly, but to hide it until the moment it was needed.
As the case expands beyond York, drawing the attention of MI5 and foreign intelligence services, Holloway realises the murder was not meant to silence the bishop. It was meant to signal-to activate a dormant network that has survived by remaining beneath notice.
The investigation becomes personal when evidence surfaces linking the conspiracy to Berlin-and to the unresolved disappearance of Holloway's brother years earlier. The truth, it seems, was never lost. It was preserved. Timed. Controlled.
Set against the shadowed politics of late-Cold War Britain and the ancient authority of one of Europe's greatest cathedrals, The York Riddle is a meticulously researched crime thriller where history is not inert, institutions do not forget, and silence is never accidental.
Truth does not disappear.
It waits.
Optional final line (if you want a sharper hook)
Book Eight in the DCI Evelyn Holloway series, The York Riddle can be read as a standalone investigation or as part of an unfolding intelligence narrative that stretches from medieval stone to Cold War power.
AUTHOR BIO
Wayne J. Gombar is a historian and crime fiction author whose work explores the intersection of institutional power, secrecy, and moral responsibility. His writing is shaped by a long-standing interest in how systems-religious, political, and intelligence-based-preserve themselves across time, often at the expense of transparency and individual lives.
Drawing on extensive research into British policing, Cold War intelligence practices, and historical archives, Gombar's fiction blends procedural realism with a deep sense of historical continuity. His novels are known for their disciplined pacing, restrained prose, and attention to period accuracy, particularly in the treatment of late-Cold War Europe and Britain's intelligence institutions.
The York Riddle is the eighth novel in the DCI Evelyn Holloway series, an ongoing body of work that examines how the past survives within modern structures-and how truth is often hidden not through chaos, but through order.
Gombar lives and works in the United States.
Hidden within medieval manuscripts, choir stalls, and sealed reliquaries, Holloway uncovers traces of a covert intelligence system that predates modern espionage yet remained active throughout the Cold War. A system that used stone, ritual, and belief as infrastructure. A system designed not to transmit information openly, but to hide it until the moment it was needed.
As the case expands beyond York, drawing the attention of MI5 and foreign intelligence services, Holloway realises the murder was not meant to silence the bishop. It was meant to signal-to activate a dormant network that has survived by remaining beneath notice.
The investigation becomes personal when evidence surfaces linking the conspiracy to Berlin-and to the unresolved disappearance of Holloway's brother years earlier. The truth, it seems, was never lost. It was preserved. Timed. Controlled.
Set against the shadowed politics of late-Cold War Britain and the ancient authority of one of Europe's greatest cathedrals, The York Riddle is a meticulously researched crime thriller where history is not inert, institutions do not forget, and silence is never accidental.
Truth does not disappear.
It waits.
Optional final line (if you want a sharper hook)
Book Eight in the DCI Evelyn Holloway series, The York Riddle can be read as a standalone investigation or as part of an unfolding intelligence narrative that stretches from medieval stone to Cold War power.
AUTHOR BIO
Wayne J. Gombar is a historian and crime fiction author whose work explores the intersection of institutional power, secrecy, and moral responsibility. His writing is shaped by a long-standing interest in how systems-religious, political, and intelligence-based-preserve themselves across time, often at the expense of transparency and individual lives.
Drawing on extensive research into British policing, Cold War intelligence practices, and historical archives, Gombar's fiction blends procedural realism with a deep sense of historical continuity. His novels are known for their disciplined pacing, restrained prose, and attention to period accuracy, particularly in the treatment of late-Cold War Europe and Britain's intelligence institutions.
The York Riddle is the eighth novel in the DCI Evelyn Holloway series, an ongoing body of work that examines how the past survives within modern structures-and how truth is often hidden not through chaos, but through order.
Gombar lives and works in the United States.
Also from
Gombar, Wayne J.
The Selous Scouts: Pseudo-Operations, Counterinsurgency, and the Shadow War in Rhodesia.
Gombar, Wayne J.
Paperback
$23.99
The Last Acceptable Prejudice: Ageism and the Quiet Marginalization of Modern Society
Gombar, Wayne J.
Paperback
$26.39
Tet: The Victory That Ended a War: How a Military Defeat Became America's Strategic Collapse
Gombar, Wayne J.
Paperback
$23.99
The Shadow Files Series; The Body Beneath Blackfriars.: (Series 1, Book 1)
Gombar, Wayne J.
Paperback
$19.19
No Justice in Jacksonville...: (When the system fails, justice takes its own path.)
Gombar, Wayne J.
Paperback
$19.19
After Oil: The World Without Fossil Fuels.: From the first barrel to the last drop, this is the rise and fall of the oil age.
Gombar, Wayne J.
Paperback
$23.99
The Politics of Incarceration: Power, Policy, and Reform in the Age of Mass Imprisonment
Gombar, Wayne J.
Paperback
$23.99
The Marshall Plan: Aid, Power, and Legacy.: "Rebuilding Hope, Restoring Peace."
Gombar, Wayne J.
Paperback
$23.99
Electric Skies & Neon Lights: Love in the Margins of Time (Series 2, Book 9)
Gombar, Wayne J.
Paperback
$19.19
"Wounds Unseen: PTSD Through the Ages of War" (An Investigative Research Project on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.)
Gombar, Wayne J.
Paperback
$23.99
Also in
Mystery & Thriller
The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume I: American Tabloid, the Cold Six Thousand; Introduction by Thomas Mallon
Ellroy, James
Hardcover
$33.25
Coffin Road: An Utterly Gripping Crime Thriller from the Author of the China Thrillers
May, Peter
Paperback
From $9.99
Sabine's Notebook: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Continues
Bantock, Nick
Hardcover
$10.99
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Movie Tie-In Edition): Book 1 of the Millennium Trilogy
Larsson, Stieg
Paperback
$9.99
The Golden Mean: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Concludes
Bantock, Nick
Hardcover
$9.99
The Pirate Queen: A Novel from the New York Times Bestselling Author of the Frozen River
Lawhon, Ariel
Hardcover
$30.40