Customer Reviews

The Excalibur Murders: A Merlin Investigation

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

 

 

Merlin is not a magician, but a scholar and a doctor who must try to solve the mystery of who killed the king's sons. This is all very well, but the author, writing under the pseudonym JMC Blair (for good reason, it turns out), has too much history to overcome to make this novel anything but irritating. In addition, the pacing of the book is off -- the first murder doesn't even happen until forty-five agonizing pages into the book.

The primary problem with this book is that it tries too hard. It tries to overcome centuries of well-established legend by breaking the characters out of their assigned personality roles. While I applaud the attempt, it just doesn't work. The author turns Arthur into a bossy, bull-headed,petty drunk; Guinevere into a spiteful shrew; and the rest of the well-known knights into either party-going ego-maniacs, or overly-pious weenies. And Nimue is Merlin's assistant? I also question the wisdom of turning Spenser's Britomart into a knight. I can see where that interpretation might come from, as the legend is vague about what Merlin told her when she visited him in his cave, but squaring off against Edmund Spenser . . . really? There are two characters that work well in this book: Morgen and Mordred. The author does a really fine job of interpreting these two, the rest aren't well developed, and the author spends a lot of time just trying to fight the stereotypes of historic precedence.

Other problems include the assumption that it's OK to use modern terminology in conversation between the characters ("Have a good workout" says Merlin to uber-jock Lancelot); a lot of exposition where dialog and action could spare the reader the encumbrance; and an overabundance of adverbs.

I have to give the author credit, though: The idea is absolutely brilliant, and it's truly a daunting task. Unfortunately, that's precisely the novel's downfall. As mentioned above, the author is forced into the position of trying to tear down the walls of conventional Arthurian legend in order to establish his own world and characters. It does this rather self-consciously and damages the actual story in the telling.

I loved the premise of this book, but the author just isn't up to the task in this first one. I truly hope he finds his stride on the next.

bw
2/5
22 jul 08

My husband knows how much I enjoy reading historical mysteries, especially the medieval sub-genre, so he was very pleased with himself when he found it among the new paperback releases at a major chain bookstore. And the fact that it was the first in a new series was a plus. However, when I started to read it, I nearly put it down because it was so disappointing.

It could be that the Arthurian legends are so well known to most readers that it was a very difficult task to devise a credible plot built around them. The author didn't even attempt it. What he chose to do instead was to write a "modern" mystery. The dialogue is 21st century, the characters are unsympathetic and poorly developed, and the plot is thin. There was no attempt to integrate life in that period of English history into the storyline; it could have occurred anywhere in the 21st century.

I compare it to those of my favorite historical mystery novelists, Peter Tremayne, Michael Jecks, Bernard Knight, Margaret Frazer, Ellis Peters, Sharon Kay Penman whose novels so evoke the periods during which they occur, whose characters are so well-developed, and whose storylines are so rich. It does not compare favorably.

So, save your hard-earned money to buy and to read a mystery novel by one of these writers.

Create a mystery, set it in a castle, use names out of Arthurian legend, hope that people will buy it because Merlin, Arthur, and Camelot have a large following. Don't bog down the story with actual research, either into the well-established Arthur of legend and literature or the much murkier historical Arthur who may have existed anytime during the 2nd through 6th centuries. Make Nimue Merlin's student and research assistant, disguised as a young man because no one would figure out that a young woman is posing as an adult male. (Not a spoiler - the reader finds this out right away). Have a female knight of the Round Table.

At some point the willing suspension of disbelief crumbles under the author's relentless refusal to toss the reader even a crumb that is recognizable as anything Arthurian, legendary or historical. Although the story has people called Merlin, Arthur, Nimue, and the rest of the cast, they are not the people we know. If you have never heard, read, or seen a movie about Arthur et al., this book might work for you. However, I absolutely can't recommend it to its natural audience, those who, like me, would buy it because of the title and sub-title.

This book had a good underlying premise. Take well loved mythic characters like Merlin and King Arthur and write a riveting mystery. The downfall was that the people who love Merlin and King Arthur demand more historical accuracy that the author gave us. I can accept some tweaking of the character types from legend, but the author just didn't have enough middle ages atmosphere and language. The characters didn't need to run around saying "foresooth" but I just couldn't accept them talking to each other and the King in such modern conversational style. And the little details were off. Somewhere in the book Merlin says Arthur's kingdom is held together with baling wire. The middle ages did not have baling wire--its a 19th century invention.

Also the plotting of the murder left something to be desired. A squire is killed, but the other two guards in the tower are only unconscious. No one thinks to ask them what they saw. The investigation needed more clinical approaches. A rational reasonable Merlin would have gone about it more methodically. I just had trouble following the plot leaps and suspending my belief.

I loved the premise. Murders in King Arthur's Camelot. Interesting characters. The problem is the mystery itself. it takes a while for the murders to occur and then they reveal fairly quickly who did it. I expected the usual mystery twist but there was none. Still it was enjoyable because of the characters and time period. Needs work on the mystery part though.

I thought the premise truly promising but the writing style is cutesy and cloying, the characters and scenes undeveloped. It's almost as though someone simply proofed a first draft and published it. I would direct anyone who wants a twist on the Arthurian stories to Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy, (actually 4 books) which I believe is still in print and which has endless depth, heart and magic. Skip this one.

I love historical mysteries so was eager to read this one. I ended up skimming it because the writing style, weak characters and modern dialogue were so off-putting. No resemblance to any of the legendary characters but this Camelot did not resemble the possibly real Arthur's world either. Arthur is a stupid, red headed drunk while his "wife", a short, stout Guenevere lives with hunky Lancelot in another castle. Knights "run laps" and have "workouts" and call each other cute nicknames. I can only be glad I bought it used and didn't waste money to buy a new copy. Not worth your time.

I took this book as an easy cozy mystery and that's what it seemed to deliver. I guess I didn't expect it to be historically precise or of critical claim. I thought it was a good, easy book that I could take with me and read on the run.

The Excalibur Murders

Though the people of Camelot consider him a magician, wizard, and sorcerer, Merlin thinks of himself as a scholar, a philosopher, and an observer of human behavior. If he'd had any idea his aiding young Arthur Pendragon in attaining the throne of England would be the end of his association with the king, that belief is soon put to rest when someone murders Arthur's twin squires, who also happen to be his [...]sons, sons he was grooming to be his heirs. With the aid of Nimue, a young woman who has fled the court of Arthur's half-sister Morgan, and now -disguised as a boy--is studying with Merlin, the kingmaker sets about to investigate the deaths, and the theft of the Stone of Bran, a crystal skull reported to have magical powers. Since Arthur hopes to use the Stone to help further unite the kingdom, Merlin has no dearth of suspects who might wish otherwise, ranging from Arthur's estranged wife Guinevere and her lover Lancelot, openly living together in Wales, to any of the knights of the Round Table, to Pellenore, the former king of Camelot, who is considered the "craziest man in the kingdom." Or is he? Perhaps Pellenore is crazy like a fox.

Merlin's investigations take him to confrontations with various well-known characters from the Arthurian legends, revealing them in all their very human and petty glory. JMC Blair's inhabitants of Camelot come across as if patterned after those in Monty Python and the Holy Grain. In this pre-Christian Camelot, Arthur is portrayed as an petulant child who wants to be king but didn't count on it being so much trouble, drowning his disappointments in a wine barrel, Guinevere is a disappointed queen, expeceting to add England to France's territories but not wanting to share her throne with the man she married in order to do so. Lancelot is beautiful, blond, unfaithful to a fault, and as dumb as a post. The knights spend their days fighting and wrestling and their nights drinking and wenching. Morgan would like to be queen, also, but in lieu of that, fights to ensure that the kingdom adheres to the "old religion" and never takes up with the new one making the rounds--Christianity. Mordred is a pimply-faced post-adolescent who'd rather curl up with a copy of Caesar's war commentaries than with a girl.

In between bouts of rheumatism and continually trying to explain to people that he's not a wizard, Merlin slowly narrows the circle of guilt, eliminating those whom the king suspects. He delivers bon mots and perfect zingers of one-liners as he goes about his detecting, and at last, with the aid of an actor friend and his traveling troup of entertainers, ferrets out the murderer a la Hamlet, with a perfectly-orchestrated scene from a play.

The dialogue in The Excalibur Murders is entertaining, the characters witty, engaging, arrogant, or baffled as needed, but all are deftly different from their usual depiction and therefore much more engaging. It's a guessing game right up to the end as to who did the deed. Merlin triumphs, but in doing so, merely strengthens everyone's belief in his supernatural powers, but so what? He brings a satisfying story to an end while doing so. I enjoy this type of story and especially like this one so much that I've already bought the second in the series, The Lancelot Murders. Can't wait to see what JMC Blair does with that!

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time anyone has set a mystery series in the quasi-historical court of King Arthur. Blair's Merlin is a scholar, physician, and philosopher, extremely well-travelled (he's been to Constantinople, Alexandria, Rome and Athens), but devoid of any magical powers (and keeps trying to convince the rest of the world of this fact); he somehow rigged the drawing of Excalibur from the stone and anvil and has been Arthur's principal advisor ever since. Now that Britain is unified, both he and the King hope to see better days, but they're disappointed when one of Arthur's squires turns up brutally murdered while fetching the supposedly miraculous Stone of Bran to Camelot's Great Hall. As the man Arthur trusts most, Merlin is asked to discover who did it and stole the Stone--and Excalibur as well. Assisted by his apprentice Colin (actually a girl in disguise), the lady knight Britomart, and the victim's twin, he sets out to do so. Then the second squire is also murdered. Was he getting close to the truth? Or did someone know that he and his brother were Arthur's sons and that the king planned to name them the heirs to his throne? Or both? Merlin, Colin, and Brit must uncover the truth or all Arthur's hopes may go a-glimmering.

What's most interesting about this story is the slant Blair takes on the Camelot legend. He seems to take the position that Camelot was what Malory and the Middle Ages thought it--technologically at a later level than it probably was, with advanced armor, stone castles, and so on--but not a Christian country: it becomes clear very early on that it still worships "the gods." Lovers of Arthurian tales will find several familiar characters here--not just Arthur and Merlin, but Guinevere (currently estranged from her husband, who is considerably younger than she, and possibly ambitious for her own sake), Lancelot (not portrayed in a particularly heroic light), Morgan leFay (the hereditary high priestess of the land) and her son Mordred, King Mark of Cornwall (whose love triangle with Tristan and Iseult occurred at some unspecified point in the past), and the slightly mad King Pellenore, who in this version isn't the bane of the Questing Beast but the former suzerain of Camelot itself, supposedly unhinged by the loss of his throne and prone to rushing madly about the castle's corridors in search of various "dragons" and "beasts" that only he can see. (One of the best characters is the very competent Britomart, whom Merlin adores and most everyone else hates because she's a better knight than the men.) Blair also portrays a country still racked beneath the surface by jealousies and treacherous ambition, which makes Merlin's job all the harder. Of course he includes any number of anachronisms--"quests," a "frigate," "lunch," technical terms like "alibi" and "suspects," a company of travelling players--but so did Malory, which puts him in very distinguished company indeed. And the seventh-century setting guarantees that Merlin and his allies will have to depend largely on deduction rather than forensics, which should make the book attractive to those who enjoy Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael. There are false trails and red herrings in plenty, as there should be in any proper mystery, and a startling resolution to the case. I found it thoroughly enjoyable and already have the sequel The Lancelot Murders (A Merlin Investigation) in my to-be-read pile.