Customer Reviews

A Plague of Poison (Templar Knight Mysteries, No. 3)

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

 

 

#3 Bascot de Marins "Templar Knight" historical mystery set in 1201, Lincoln UK. Bascot, attempting to make a decision as to whether or not he should leave the Templars and accept King John's offer to have his father's lands restored to him and allow him to name an heir. He worries that his ward, Gianni, a ragamuffin that he rescued from a life of poverty on the streets, will end up back where he came from if he were to go back to his Templar brothers rather than leave the order and remain one of Nicolaa de la Haye's retainers.

He's distracted from thinking about his choices, however, when a rash of poisonings plague Lincoln, with several deaths both in castle and town, apparently through honey laced with a deadly herb that lead to a quick and violent death. Near-panic begins to take the townsfolk, with people suspicious of everyone around them. Lady Nicolaa places the castle cooks under orders to serve only plain, unspiced foods, and charges Bascot with finding the vile murderer. His first task is to determine the motive of the killer, and to do that, he must try to figure out if the actual victims were the intended victims.

I like this series and am beginning to like Bascot more each book, but one thing I have found is that there are too many peripheral characters, such that when the killer was revealed, I barely remembered who they were. While not a wholly satisfying book, I'll definitely read on--a great sense of time and place and interesting major characters overshadow the meandering investigation.

I wanted very much to like this book. I found the protagonist and his young ward engaging, the writing fluid, the setting one of my favorite historical periods.

Unfortunately, knowing too much worked against me. Some rather startlingly inauthentic elements jarred me from engagement, the secondary characters were far too flat, and the almost comical "conclusion jumping" of many of the characters, including the protagonist Templar, made it hard to really believe in what was happening. Other reviewers have claimed the first two in the series were better. I'll have to give those books a chance and read them. The author and her main character are strong enough to cause me to do that, but I can't commend this book to a first time reader of the author. Start with something else.

First Sentence: With the celebration of Eastertide at the end of March, a warm spring radiance had descended on Lincoln.

Templar Knight Bascot de Marins is recovering in the castle at Lincoln after eight years captivity and torture in the Holy Lands. Someone has poisoned a scribe of the castle and the family of a merchant in the town. The poison is traced to a high-grade honey and the poisonings were deliberate. It is also realized that the victims where not those intended. The first victim was to have been the castle's castellan, who asks for Bascot's help in finding the killer.

I very much enjoyed the first two books of this series, but the third wore a bit thin. It is a classic investigative mystery, which was well done, but short on dialogue and contained very little suspense. Although we know something of the primary characters, there is not a lot of depth provided to them. The sense of time and place was adequate but not rich or terribly evocative. In all, I'd have to say this was a good read, but not much more than that.

In all, I'd have to say this was a good read, but not much more than that.

"'Sweet Jesu, it was terrible. The man and his wife covered in vomit, their eyes open and staring as though they had witnessed the depths of hell, and the little girl ...La pauvre petite, she was curled up at her mother's side clutching at the arm of her maman, as though beseeching the poor woman to save her...Only a man without a soul would willingly cause the death of such an innocent." (page 53, @2009 Berkeley Prime Crime, New York)

As spring approaches full flower in the medieval town of Lincoln a serial killer arrives. Dormant plans seeded by rage have now come to fruition in the warm sun and soft rains of April. Both castle and town are horrorstruck as seemingly unconnected individuals die savagely, victims of a stealthy poisoner. From castellan to merchant, many citizens look constantly over their shoulders, fearful it was they who were intended as victim. Others under suspicion face the loss of their livelihoods and risk violent reprisal from incensed townspeople.

The sadistic murderer, sufficiently bold and knowledgable, is himself victimized by a curious ill luck. Through the typical waywardness of human behavior he sometimes misses his intended victim. In order to reach his correct victim the murderer is forced to continue his attacks and thereby risk showing more of his hand with every murder. Can he outsmart an entire town, including the man given to the task of detection, worldly wise and intuitive Knight's Templar Bascot de Marins? Or will the merciless killer be brought to justice and meet his own unnatural end, swinging from rope and scaffold?

Familiar characters continue to develop and reveal more of themselves to the reader which makes up for a somewhat slow start as the author completes the necessary retelling of the backstory. New characters are also introduced and several interesting pairings both illuminate and deflect de Marins quest for the truth. The quirky ratcatcher cousins, the brooding Severtsson brothers and the impulsive Rivelar sons all explore the various nature of familial loyalty and love, the very things that detective de Marins comes to decide are at the heart of the mystery.

Once past the very unsettling murders the story returns to the comfortable distance mystery readers expect and we can once again engage in the enjoyable intellectual exercise of pondering motivation and method. The identity of the murderer is truly a surprise and my only complaint being that I would have liked to see more of that character in the incognito impersonation, not just in psychotic asides.

Often we mystery lovers so enjoy the puzzle that the victims become secondary to our concern; contrivances created for the enjoyment of our mental faculties. Although we the reader are let into the workings of the murderer's mind through anonymous asides, none of the killer's crazed rationalizations are as chilling as the death of the little girl. Unlike so many mysteries where characters are often characterless - paperboard figures with no believably real human connections - Ash's town of Lincoln is peopled by those whose everyday existence is underpinned by the natural bonds of community and family. There is evil, but there is also genuine affection and love. Once I got a sense of the love for this child and her family I was struck by how such a loss would effect my own life. I was disgusted and deeply saddened by that death in a way that is counter to my usual experience of the cozy mystery.

Maureen Ash has stretched to incorporate some liteary devices not in her previous works, along with fleshing out her generally optimistic characters with a greater sense of darkness and sorrow. There is an experimental quality, a sense that something new is emerging that the writer has yet to fully execute. I hope that she continues polishing and honing her style and I expectantly wonder what will be the next adventure in this enjoyable series.

Follows on quite nicely from the first two but isn't as good.

People start dying and the Templar goes on the investigation but it never really gathers steam and never touches on the murderer until right at the end. The reader doesn't get any chances to discover who the murderer is as he isn't in the story very much at all.

Hopefully, the next one will be an improvement and a true whodunit.

Templar-turned-detective Bascot de Marins returns in another tale of murder most foul. In this case, assorted Lincoln townspeople are dying horrible deaths from poisoning. de Marins is called in to investigate in this third entry in the TEMPLAR KNIGHT MYSTERY series.

To borrow a well-known phrase from Victoria R: "We are not amused." A PLAGUE OF POISON is light-weight fare. I thought Ash's recreation of life in 'ye olde England' was rather superficial and perfunctory. Likewise the characters were all flat; no one on the roster to root for or to grieve for. The murderer is uncovered in the end but it's all rather uninvolving.

Reading Ash's book, I could not help but compare her to the 800-lb. gorilla of English medieval murder mysteries, Michael Jecks, Perhaps it's an unfair comparison since Jecks has been cranking out his Furnshill/Puttock tales for almost 15 years now but Ash really has a long way to go to equal Jecks' ability to make 14th Century England come alive.

Short and not-so-sweet: A PLAGUE OF POISON is a pleasant time-waster but not much more. Having said that, have a look. You might enjoy it tremendously. Your call, folks!

I enjoyed the book for easy reading, but I cannot see why this type of book is so expensive for Kindle. It is so easy reading that the children are reading it without difficulty, and that is fine, but for the price I will probably not purchase more until the price comes down.

I enjoyed the first two books in this series very much, and was looking forward to this one. I have to say it was something of a disappointment. It reads almost as if different parts were written by different people. A good editor could have helped -- I noted one sentence with the word "had" in it SIX times.
Still, it wasn't without its moments... the description of the ratcatchers at work (Yes, that was a real profession) was good.

Let's hope that this book turns out to to be the exception, and that the next one is more like the first two.

This series appeals to my love of historical mysteries,and facination with the Templars. Maureen Ash earns a place in my bookcase next to the Michael Jecks Templar series

Maureen Ash has continued her interesting series of Templar mysteries. The characterizations are deep enough to inspire caring and the story is compelling. I'm already waiting for the next one.