Customer Reviews

Belladonna at Belstone (Knights Templar)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A young nun at St. Mary's Priory dies whilst in care at the infirmary; the prioress of the nunnery is struggling to retain her position in spite of accusations of immorality and fraud. The Keeper of the King's Peace, Sir Baldwin Furnshill and Bailiff Simon Puttock are called in to investigate the charges. And in the midst of all this mayhem, another nun is murdered. This mystery lives up to expectations. There are enough twists and turns to keep an avid mystery lover happy and satisfied.

Michael Jecks' West Country mysteries have always been a favourite of mine and I'm always delighted when a new one is published! Definitely a series to be collected and enjoyed again and again.

In this novel, author Michael Jecks rightly strips the romanticism from medieval monastic life and introduces his readers to the emblematic St. Mary's Priory: isolated, ramshackle, awash in its own petty politics, and filled with imperfect men and women--some harboring secret pasts, some secret fears, some secret ambitions, and some secret plans.

In this the 8th book of Michael Jecks' mystery series set in the 1300s West Country and featuring Sir Baldwin Furnshill, a Keeper of the King's Peace in Devon, and his friend Simon Puttock, a Bailiff, Jecks describes compelling details concerning monastic life, including the microcosm that was a priory's infirmary, medical techniques of the day, and ways in which simply the layout and condition of monastic buildings so impacted nuns' and monks' daily lives of prayer and work.

The cast of supporting characters is one of the largest yet of the series. Lady Elizabeth, Prioress of St. Mary's, is an unusual and enjoyable creation. The episcopal ambitions of Suffragan Bishop Bertrand (note the French name) threaten to ruin Sir Baldwin's and Simon's investigation. Also enter the cellaress Ela, ancient Joan, the young priest Luke, the rigorous Margherita, and others.

Jecks also weaves into his enjoyable tale subplots in which we see the characters of Edgar and Hugh--loyal companions of Sir Baldwin and Simon respectively--in transition, and Lady Jeanne, Baldwin's new wife, begin to strongly come into her own.

I am learning so much about the medieval church. You don't get this in school.

First Sentence: She was lucky not to have died.

Sir Baldwin Furnshill, Keep of the King's Peace, and Bailiff Simon Puttock have been summoned by Bishop Bertrand, the representative of Bishop of Stapledon, to go to St. Mary's Priory. One nun has been injured, another has died. Bishop Baldwin received a letter from Sister Margherita, the treasurer, accusing the prioress, Lady Elizabeth of willing let the priory fall into disrepair and vows to be broken.

I so enjoy this series. Baldwin and Simon are great characters. They are fully developed with home lives and a strong bond of friendship. Part of the story focuses on Baldwin's new wife, Jeanne, and her coming into her role as lady of the manor. Other than the protagonists, none of the characters are particularly appealing. Rather than an example of piety and virtue, St. Mary's Priory is an example of the seven deadly sins. For me, it is the light humor and relationships make the books particularly enjoyable.

Mr. Jecks' research is more than apparent. I love that he included a Glossery, an outline of the schedule and services for those in the priory, a cast of characters, and author's notes on the history of the time within the book. He also has a wonderful website with photographs of the area.

The story is so well done. There are plenty of suspects but no clear motive. I certainly didn't solve the puzzle until the killer was revealed. This may not have been the strongest book in the series of 27 books, but I'm determined to read one book each month until I am caught up.

...that was mostly because I wanted it to be over as fast as possible. I mostly enjoy the series. Despite some really painful historical anomolies (I don't expect medieval language, but I think the author should refrain from using words that refer to concepts that didn't exist at the time, e.g. claustrophobia) the books have been enjoyable and entertaining. The one prior to this was a bit dark, but still good.

This one was just not enjoyable at all. I mean, if you want to hear about the worst possible medieval convent there could have been, for whatever reason you could have, it might be OK. But as another reader has pointed out, ther is not a single person in the whole convent that is suited for conventual life. The author seems to feel that it is impossible for anyone actually to keep a vow of chastity, although lots of people throughout the ages have done it. But aside from the sex, everyone was an inveterate liar, and there were one or more murderers (don't want to post a spoiler!), and power-hungry nuns. There wasn't a single likeable character in the book, and I am including the bailiff because he just seems to wander around aimlessly stumbling over things.

Were there convents in which people sinned and nuns got pregnant? Yes. Were they really common? Well, not so much as you might want to think, especially if you are CoE and might feel a little guilty about Henry VIII and the dissolution. :) But it doesn't even make any sense that a significant number of convents would be like the one depicted in this book. People would have found out and would have stopped sending their daughters to them. Sure, a convent might have one nun who doesn't even try to keep vows of chastity, and/or one who was a drunk, and/or one who is a tattletale, and proably at least one who was more ambitious than was appropriate. But there would have been some people who actually prayed and had some sort of spiritual life. They spent a lot of hours a day in prayer, for nobody at all to get any benefit from it.

Another annoying point about this book is that one of the characters is constantly referred to as a suffragan. It's so constant that it's like the author was proud of knowing the word. It is used a lot of times when it would be more natural just to call the man a bishop. Now, that is mildly annoying, except it becomes REALLY annoying because the man is not in fact a suffragan. In the CoE he would be a suffragan, but in the Catholic church, he would just be an auxiliary. The author keeps talking about how the suffragan wants a diocese of his own, but in the Catholic Church, a suffragan HAS a diocese of his own, and was (at the time) merely under some judicial authority from a nearby Metropolitan bishop or arch-bishop. I can find no information indicating that the usage of the term has changed since the middle ages. It was certainly that way at the Council of Trent (1564), although the amount of connection between the metropolitan and the suffragans has diminished since then.

Also, in the intro, the author says that full nuns and monks were obedientaries. In a small monastery, that was probably true, but not because the word "obedientary" means "full nun or monk." It means someone who holds an office in the monastery (porter, cellarer, etc.). In a small monastery, there would be at least as many offices as people to fill them, so all the full monks and/or nuns would end up being obedientaries as well. But in a larger place it wouldn't be that way, and you didn't have to hold office to be a full nun or monk.

Anyway, if you're going to skip any book in this series, I'd pick this one. The characters are all nasty and the research is not up to par. In addition, the story is not plotted very tightly, with the bishop sort of disappering for long periods of time when it would be convenient for the author, but sometimes with no explanation given. Bishops generally would have made their presence felt in a convent that size.

Michael Jecks gave up a career in the computer industry when he began writing the internationally successful Templar series. Well all I can say is the Computer Industries loss is the reader's gain. He has now written about a score of the Knights Templar mystery books featuring Sir Baldwin de Furnshill and Bailiff Simon Puttock and there are more to follow. Michael's books are full of intrigue and mystery and they are particularly well researched. Mr. Jecks lives in the area he writes about and I am sure this must assist him a great deal with his background research.

It is 1321 and the prioress of St. Mary's, Lady Elizabeth Topham is fighting to retain her position as prioress in the face of almost overwhelming opposition. She has been accused by Sister Margherita, the treasurer at St. Mary's of giving much needed funds to the new vicar.

Many of the nuns are convinced that Margherita would make a better prioress, especially now that it is known that a young nun named Moll was murdered in her sick bed.

Sir Baldwin and Simon are summoned to investigate and it quickly becomes evident that the vows of obedience, chastity and poverty are being broken with alarming frequency. Then a second nun is murdered and the two men face one of their most puzzling assignments.

The story is very intriguing, full of mysteries and twists.
Although it is kind of weird that unfit women wind up as nuns, it is the uniqueness of the story and the creativeness of an author to come up with this book that makes it entertaining. In my opinion this story will stir our minds to the reality of the world but such fictional story is not to be taken so seriously enough to depress the readers. Fictional stories are intended to entertain, but at same time make us more aware.

In looking for a new mystery series, I decided to try a book by Michael Jecks and chose this one. It was awful. You could hardly pay attention to the mystery (which was not a winner anyway) for the garbage about the nuns and monks carrying on various affairs. I know that there were people who did not keep their vows, but I honestly doubt that there was ever a convent so filled to the brim with promiscuity. As a reader, you never turned a corner without coming upon a dishevelled nun coming out of the bushes.

For someone who was brought up on Ellis Peters' Cadfael or Margaret Frazer's Dame Frevisse or any of the hundreds of other historical mysteries, I can definitely recommend NOT buying this book. As I said, it was awful.

I'm afraid that I still found this novel to be more depressing than anything else. Even given the time period of the story, and the fact that at that time some women who were not fit to be nuns ended up in convents, I found all of the nuns in the story to be such liars and so plainly unfit to be nuns that I felt the convent shouldn't have been left standing at the end of the story. It didn't seem to me that there was even one woman within the story who really should have stayed in the convent. Perhaps Lady Elizabeth and Margherita came the closest - by the end of the story - to becoming "real nuns."