Customer Reviews

A Play of Piety (A Joliffe Mystery)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Margaret Frazer has done it again--another well researched medieval mystery in a most unusual setting. Joliffe the player has come home from his stint as a spy in Normandy to become a kind of hospital orderly in rural England. He still bears the scars and regrets of his experiences abroad, of having learned how to kill an enemy and of having actually done so. A man of peace, Joliffe suffers from terrible nightmares and feelings of guilt. (Today we might say that he has post-traumatic stress disorder.)

Fortunately Joliffe is here reunited with his friends the players, and with fatherly Bassett, the head of the theatrical company. Joliffe has bed-pots to empty, elderly patients to wait on, and a grimly depicted mystery to solve while the little company waits for Bassett to recover from a disabling attack of arthritis.

The arduous physical tasks, as well as the intrigue, combine to occupy Joliffe's mind and to begin the psychological healing that he sorely needs. At the book's end, as the players take to the road again, Ms. Frazer tells us that Joliffe is contented to be back in his old life and back on the road.

My only regret is that I really liked Joliffe as a spy (in "A Play of Treachery"). In "A Play of Piety" I miss the contacts and relationships that Joliffe had with bishops and nobles in France, the new things he was learning, and the double life he was living in order to survive. I hope that Bishop Beaufort is not done with Joliffe's services, and that Joliffe might even go abroad again in the future.

With that said, I give "A Play of Piety" five stars for its interesting plot development, flowing descriptions and authentic background information, as well as its unusually nasty villains.

Margaret Frazer brings so much more than just a single mistery to her books. To be able to include several story levels that carry through the whole series is an accomplishment that few authors even care to try at one level. Only by reading the whole series over can you separate out the multiple stories. The richness of history at a level that allows the reader to not only identify with the characters doing manual labor but also with the gentry and ruling classes. This is an exceptional series along with the "Frevisse" series.

I think Margaret Frazer's greatest strength is in drawing a scene that let's you really sink into the atmosphere of medieval England. I love the way she banishes unfair mischaracterizations and tries to help the modern reader slip into the minds of characters so very far away in time (and often space!)

I found this novel a bit less urgent than many of her others. Oh, there was a murder, but there wasn't quite the sense that our beloved protagonist was really at risk this time. It felt like Joliffe was more a witness than a participant, though that fit well enough with his personal needs at this point in his "life"... That said, I didn't regret a minute of my time spent reading this book. I prefer character development to plot sometimes in a good series like this one.

I enjoy historical re-enactment in the SCA, and medieval healing is a related side hobby, so the details of hospital life were really interesting to me. It rang pretty true, except, perhaps, for the presence of the "defective" children. I didn't mind them being there, but the likely autism of Heinrich felt very modern.

Joliffe is back with the other players after serving the Bishop of Beaufort as a spy in Paris. They are staying at a hospital where Basset is receiving care for a terrible flare up of his arthritis, and while his friends are put to work at the harvest, Joliffe is tasked with the jobs around the hospital. When the hospital's patron, the petty, tyrannical Mistress Thorncoffyn, insists that someone is trying to kill her, no one takes notice until someone dies. Then Joiliffe's curiosity must be assuaged and he determines to find the truth.

It's great to be back in 15th century England with Joliffe and the gang, after the politics of the previous book. Joliffe's character has become more introspective than ever as he contemplates the changes in his life and the effects on his psyche of having killled a man in his other life as a spy. But Joliffe is as sharp as ever, and the characters around him as vividly drawn as always. I was only slightly disappointed by the lack of drama in the denouement but the mystery was solid as usual.

Once again Margaret Frazer has come up with a unique story that showcases Joliffe's exceptional deductive talents! She also brings us one step closer to figuring out the history of Joliffe and what drove him to join the players. Not as action packed as the previous two stories, "A Play of Piety" is equally as entertaining in its descriptions and events that take place in a hospital. It was refreshing to learn about what could really happened in a medieval hospital. The mystery was intriguing and kept me guessing for a long time. As always, Joliffe is as mysterious as the plot. I highly recommend this book for lovers of Frazer's stories and for anyone interested in medieval medicine. I'm looking forward to the next installment and I hope Frazer continues to reveal more about Joliffe's past.

If you love Joliffe this book will not disappoint. If you are a fan of Margaret Frazer and also read her other series, you will understand that Joliffe will have to transition sometime and it begins here. I had expected him to be thrown into his new life never to return to the old and to get no closure on the old life. Not so, here is what I think is the beginning of the bridge to get Joliffe into his new life. That said, this is a great book because not only is the story well told but the studies of people and why they do what they do is so interesting. I have read it twice - once just to get the feel and the second time to savor all the nuances.

I love this series of books. Joliffe is a simple man of few demands but also an intelligent and observant actor in a group of players. During a stop at a hospital, when one of the players becomes ill, Joliffe witnesses a beating that appears to result in a death but he isn't convinced by these conclusions; the pieces don't quite fit, so he starts asking questions. As a player and temporary worker in the hospital, he talks to people, hears things and can observe things the crowner (investigator) can't. Margaret Frazer paints an amazing picture of the times, daily life, and conditions Joliffe and his friends live in and how each of them play a part in the final conclusions drawn from the facts.

A PLAY OF PIETY by Margaret Frazer finds Joliffe returning to the players after eight months of training in the art of spymanship and war. His search for them leads him to St. Giles, a hospital where Basset is recovering from a painful attack in his legs and feet. Rose has taken a position in the kitchen of the hospital while Piers, Gil, and Ellis work in the fields to bring in a good harvest after three years of poor crops.
Joliffe is assigned to work in the hospital for his keep and finds washing dishes an excellent time to confront the changes in his life and the demons that haunt him since he killed his first human being.
A member of the family that established St. Giles, Mistress Thorncoffyn, is in residence and treats the sisters as her own personal servants adding to their burden of caring for the aged and ill.
Murder finds it way into the hospital and near the end Joliffe finaly finds the pieces in this slow moving rest from the events of the previous novels.
A good read, but be prepared for a languid pace.
Nash Black, author of SANDPRINTS OF DEATH

"A Play of Piety" is the sixth in Margaret Frazer's Joliffe series of Fifteenth Century mysteries. Joliffe, a member of a troupe of traveling players, has been away from the group learning the use of weapons and more under the orders of the power Bishop Beaufort, who has been using Joliffe as his spy unbeknownst to his fellow actors. Joliffe was also in Paris when the French took the city back from the English. He has nightmares about the bloody scenes he saw there, and he is glad to be allowed to return to the players, who are, in essence, his family.

Joliffe is dismayed to learn, however, that the troupe is in St. Giles because one of its members is in the small town's hospital. He is somewhat relieved when arrives to find the hospitalized player is Thomas Basset, the leader of the troupe, who is suffering from severe arthritis, not from a life-threatening condition. It is harvest time, and Joliffe's fellow actors are earning money as field laborers, except for Thomas' daughter, who works at the hospital. Joliffe is quickly hired to help out at the facility. Although emptying bedpans is not the his ideal occupation, he likes -- for the most part -- the people he works with and the patients. If it weren't for Mistress Thorncoffyn, the visiting daughter of the man who founded the hospital, his days would be relatively pleasant. Mistress Thorncoffyn is grossly overweight, arrogant, greedy, and demanding. Her servant, Idany, is as mean and rude as her mistress. But when someone dies under odd circumstances, Joliffe cannot help but put his mind to investigating the death and puzzling out the problem.

Frazer's descriptions of the Fifteenth Century hospital, the herbal and astrological medical treatments, and the lives of the people during this time period are excellent and truly interesting. Although the novel contains a lot of characters -- there are a number of women working at the hospital -- all of them fit nicely into the story. Much of the book centers on Joliffe's reasoning process as he tries to work out if someone was murdered or died accidently, and if a murder was committed, who could have been the perpetrator. The technique provides readers with plenty of opportunity to form their own opinions. Some, who are avid -guess-who-did-it mystery readers, may think the solution is a bit unfair, but the whole experience of reading such a well-written historical mystery does a great deal to make up for this.

Too much Joliffe, and not enough mystery sums it up for me. Frazer spends too much time with Joliffe coming to terms with his previous experiences. When the mysterious death does occur, Joliffe seems clueless until near the end when he is finally given the necessary clues to make sense of everything. A good mystery provides the reader with sufficient clues to come to a successful conclusion, if he is sharp enough to spot them. This one doesn't.