Customer Reviews

Murder Most Medieval: Noble Tales of Ignoble Demises

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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Murder Most Medieval is the best anthology of detective stories I have ever read. What makes it unusual is the uniformly high quality of the stories it contains. Each story is superb, beautifully written and skillfully plotted. Yet each story embodies its own author's style. The stories also differ from each other in in content; they are about different periods in time, about different kinds of person, about different ways and walks of life. I rarely like anthologies, but this one is truly extraordinary. The authors deserve much praise; most of the stories make me want to rush out and find other works by those authors unfamiliar to me. The editor deserves much praise as well for putting together such a unified and excellent work.

This is a book of short stories, a format I have never been particularly fond of. I personally use them to fill in the time between finishing one book and starting another and as medieval murder mystery stories are one of my favourites I was happy to acquire this one.

There are thirteen short stories in this book by some of the best medieval mystery writers around at the moment, including Michael Jecks, Margaret Frazer, Peter Tremayne, Edward Marston and many others. So within the cover of one book we are re-introduced to such old favourites as Sister Fidelma, Cadfael and other characters from the pens of these authors.

I was pleased with the book. The quality of the paper, typeface etc is good. The contents are also good. I wish there were a couple more stories. Fortunatly I had only read one of them before. The story types varied in time period, viewpoint, and nature of the mystery. I liked some more than others but they were all well-crafted and worth re-reading.