Customer Reviews

A Plague on Both Your Houses

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

 

 

I have now read all of Susanna Gregory's medieval whodunnits (A masterly murder being the latest). They are excellent. I am sure there are many Ellis Peter's fans who will decry them as a poor imitation but they are simply the best out on the market. Admittedly it has taken Ms Gregory 4 novels to really get going and you can almost see the development in the writing skills as you read each one. What makes them good is that the whodunnit is secondary to the character development and microcosm of 14th century Cambridge. By the sixth novel in the series each character is well rounded (certainly in Michael's case!) and consistent with a huge variance of supporting actors. Whilst each murder is a separate mystery in itself the ramifications of each one reaches into the later books and indeed provides clues and reasoning behind the later actions of the Cambridge scholars and townspeople.
Read them...

For those of us mourning the passing of Ellis Peters and the end of the Brother Cadfael mystery series, it is nice to know that others are writing in the genre. Ms. Gregory's writing isn't quite of the calibre of Ms. Peters, but certainly worth the effort. This is the first in the series of her mysteries set in the Dark Ages in England. The venue is Cambridge and her hero (Brother Matthew) is a monk as well as teacher and physician in the college. There are certainly a lot more killings than in Ms. Peters books, but the story is good and the characters real. I will be reading the rest of the series.

When talking about medieval whodunnits comparisons with the wonderful Ellis Peters are inevitable. This series is not in fact quite as derivative as the other review suggests - the protagonist is not in fact a monk - Matthew Bartholomew is a physician and lecturer at the fledgling University of Cambridge. His sidekick, brother Michael is in fact a monk. Having said that, the combination of monks and medicine can only invite thoughts of Ellis Peters' 'Brother Cadfael' books, and this series comes off poorly in any such comparison. Whilst it seems to have been very thoroughly researched from an historical standpoint, and has a quite good storyline, the writing is far inferior to the 'Cadfael' books.

Ms Gregory seems to have had problems trying to decide what 'voice' to give her characters. This is always a problem with historical fiction - if you choose to use archaic language with lots of 'thees' and 'thous' it can feel clumsy and artificial and get in the way of the story. Most authors choose to use modern language, however anachronistic, so that we feel more immediacy and can concentrate on the story rather than the language. Ms. Gregory rather falls between the two stools, using reasonably modern language but eschewing the use of contractions ('I can not see the problem' rather than 'I can't see the problem') so that the whole thing seems rather stilted and unnatural.

I'm not sure whether it's this rather awkward writing style, but for whatever the reason, the characters just don't seem to come alive and the narrative plods a bit. To be honest, I really find it difficult to care who did what to whom and Matthew Bartholomew is so wishy-washy I don't think I'd go so far as to call him a 'hero'. If you're looking for a worthy successor to Ellis Peters, this isn't it. If you want a high quality historical whodunnit I'd far rather recommend Lindsey Davis's Falco series.

Having said all that, these really aren't dreadful books - they just suffer badly when compared to Ellis Peters.