Customer Reviews

The Sea Hath Spoken

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In Newbury, New England, Indian Massaquoit finds sea gulls eating the remains of a dead man. The captain of the nearby ship Good Hope owned by local resident Catherine Williams, who is also Massaquoit's employer, identifies the corpse as a sailor. The townsfolk wonder if Billy Lockhart drowned from too much to drink or did one of those traveling Quakers kill him?

Attending the Puritan religious services are two Quaker siblings, Roger and Jane Whitcomb as guests of Catherine. During the service, Roger takes exception to a comment by Minister Davis. Soon, a glove his shoved down the visitor's throat leaving him choking to death. Massaquoit saves Roger's life. However, not long afterward, someone succeeds in killing Roger. Though she rejected his beliefs, Catherine takes it personally that someone murdered her guest. She begins her own inquiries.

THE SEA HATH SPOKEN is a tremendous Colonial mystery that deserves a wide readership. The story line is well written, as seventeenth century life in New England seems so vividly alive. The who-done-it is fun and Catherine is quite the heroine. With a powerful support cast augmenting the plot with an insider's look at the times, Stephen Lewis hath spoken and readers will appreciate this tale and other novels (see THE BLIND IN THE DARKNESS and THE DUMB SHALL SING) in this superb series.

Harriet Klausner

Normally I don't even bother to review books I don't like, but I really wanted to enjoy this book and was disappointed. Having recently read Edward Cline's "Sparrowhawk" books I have become more interested in the early days of American history, so when I read the back cover of this book I got my hopes up for some good reading and some historical information... I ended up with neither one.

This is a rather dull, slow-moving mystery starting with a ghastly whipping scene. The characters never get developed to the point where the reader can actually care about them and there are some characters who play pivital roles who aren't developed at all... they just kind of pop in and out of the story as needed. I found it a bit confusing.

As an additional note the author seems to think naturalism is the same as historical fiction. It is not.

This is the third in a series set in pre-Colonial America and featuring Catherine Williams, midwife, and the Native American Massaquoit.

In this outing, Catherine takes in her father's friends' children, Jane and Roger Whitcomb. Immediately there is trouble when the two young adults refuse to dampen their Quaker enthusiasm before the town elders who are Puritan - each religion thinks the other to be wrong-minded.

The book opens with the discovery of the body of a sailor from one of Catherine's ships. After a series of events leads to the death of one of the central people in this drama, Catherine and Massaquoit must solve the murder lest an innocent be unfairly convicted.

This is one of the outstanding historical series around, and with each outing, the characters become more developed and the plots more complex. Always present is the history of the period - not interfering with the character development or the plot but certainly an important part of each book.

If you're just discovering the series, I'd recommend that you begin with the first book, THE DUMB SHALL SING, to familiarize yourself with how the unlikely pair of Catherine and Massaquoit meet and come to respect each other.

The only thing that concerns me is that 15 years have passed since the first book. Since Catherine was no youngster in the first book, she must be nearing elder stage by the day's standards. I don't want to think that Lewis will some day have Catherine leave this world and end the series.