The Last Templar

OK, so here is how I got started on "The Templar Series" by Michael Jecks. I get this book catalog from Daedalus and instead of constantly buying new books, if something sounds interesting, I try and find it in the public library. But, of course, if it is part of a series, I want to start with the first one...so this is the first of these historical mysteries set in the early 14th C (mostly) Devon, England, featuring a former Templar Knight, Sir Baldwin Furnshill, and Simon Puttock, the newly appointed bailiff for the de Courtenay family. The time period is a tumultuous one and tiny villages and small towns, the magnificent woods, and the rolling hills form the backdrop for lots of bad behavior--in this case, murder.
In this book, we get most of the background of Baldwin, which is key to one of the murders--not hard to guess which one. He has come back to England after over 20 years abroad fighting as a Templar Knight, in service to Pope Clement. The Templars were betrayed by the avaricious Pope, however, working in league with France's king, both of them seeking to gain the money and properties of the Church's defenders. Baldwin escapes the wholesale purge and vows to find out who is responsible for defaming the Templars and bringing about their downfall through lies, contrived evidence and falsified confessions. But once he identifies the culprit, he realizes that the man is beyond his reach, until--perhaps through the will of God--the former Templar and now newly appointed abbot comes to England.
Simon has just taken up his post as bailiff when a farmer is murdered in a tiny village on Furnshill's land, and it is Baldwin who figures out that it was murder and not an accident. Then the abbot, on his way to a new appointment at a nearby abbey, is kidnapped and burned alive. And while Simon is hunting these killers, a band of thieves move into the area and slaughter a traveling group of merchants. He has his hands full, but he finally sorts it all out.
Promising characters, beautiful settings, seemingly well-researched history, good plotting--I would definitely carry on with these and there are plenty of them. Oh boy!