The Pain Threshold

In the fictional Westonian Republic, archaeologist Corbin Vale leads an excavation of a medieval assize court where forty skeletal remains hint at a mass execution for malingering. When team members begin dying in ways that echo the ancient punishments, the case is ruled accidental by the Social Assurance Commission. Only junior researcher Marcus Harlow, convinced the deaths are linked to the flawed medical evidence buried centuries ago, challenges the official verdict. Drawing on Boris Akunin's layered mystery style, the novel reveals that the terrifying "reversal" is not a supernatural curse but the fatal consequence of our cognitive slowness to grasp the intricate interplay of psychology, pathology, and bureaucratic blindness.