The Spirit and the Flesh

By Douglas Boyd

Supernatural possession and naked greed

It’s 1992, and Jay French is a young, beautiful English flautist whose body is sought by the spirit of her ancestress Eleanor of Aquitaine, the only woman to sit on the thrones of both France and England.

For eight centuries her powerful spirit has been seeking the perfect body in which to return to earth.

War-scarred American TV reporter Merlin Freeman falls for Jay, but finds that, when making love, she seems to be two different women as Eleanor’s spirit fights for possession of Jay’s flesh.

Following a trail of ancient clues designed by the twelfth-century queen to entrap a body identical to her own when young, Merlin and Jay are in a race against medieval scholar and former SS officer Dr Hermann Kreuz for the treasure that caused the death of Richard the Lionheart and was then hidden by Eleanor to finance her return to earth.

Trailing them all is Kassim Chakrouty, a Lebanese terrorist intent on killing the others and grabbing the treasure to finance his jihadist group.

Douglas Boyd is former BBC television producer and historian with many fiction and non-fiction works to his name. Boyd has lived in Aquitaine, southwest France, for the last forty years.