The Weaver's Inheritance (Roger the Chapman Medieval Mysteries) - Hardcover

Sedley, Kate

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312276842 ISBN 13: 9780312276843

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2001

Synopsis

The year is 1476, and after a hard winter hawking his wares through the ice and rain, Roger the Chapman is looking forward to spending Christmas in Bristol, enjoying the warm hearth and good food of his mother-in-law Margaret-even if it means the young widower will have to endure her constant matchmaking.

However, Margaret has barely introduced him to her cousin Adela when Roger's attentions are demanded elsewhere. The long-lost son of a wealthy Bristol weaver, presumed murdered on a visit to London six years before, has miraculously reappeared, to the delight of the old man and to the indignation of Alison Burnett, who refuses to believe that the bedraggled stranger is her brother Clement-the rightful heir to half her father's fortune. When Alison's violent objections provoke Alderman Weaver into disinheriting her altogether, she appeals to Roger's reputation as a solver of mysteries to prove her growing suspicions right.

About this title

About the Author

Kate Sedley was born in Bristol and educated at The Red Maid's School, Westbury-on-Trym. She is married and has a son, a daughter and three grandchildren. The Weaver's Inheritance is her eighth medieval mystery featuring Roger the Chapman.

Reviews

Roger the Chapman, hero and narrator of Sedley's late 15th-century series (The Plymouth Cloak, etc.), has again recounted a rich and wonderful tale. The Wars of the Roses having lasted for decades, the English people are weary of civil war and anxious to settle down to peace, quiet and prosperity. Not slow off the mark, a wealthy Bristol weaver and civic leader, Albert Weaver, has been acquiring a fortune that he intends to leave to his surviving daughter, his son having been apparently murdered several years earlier (Death and the Chapman). When Albert accepts a young man who arrives in the town as his "dead" son, his daughter Alison is shocked and unbelieving; she thinks "Clement" is a well-coached impostor, and enlists Roger's aide in unmasking him and his fellow conspirators. Roger agrees to try to establish the truth, and over the next few months undertakes journeys that will lead him among the middle-class merchants and craftsmen of England, into the London "stews" and to brief encounters with the feuding nobles on whose rivalry the future of England may well rest. These journeys also lead Roger to greater self-awareness, as well as a better understanding of the superstitions that shape medieval minds. Throughout, Sedley's well-drawn characters act consistently and credibly. In the end the author wraps up a complex plot, which includes the possibility that Clement is actually the weaver's son, in a satisfyingly tidy bundle. This book is sure both to please those already acquainted with Sedley's work and to win new converts.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Fifteenth-century sleuth Roger the Chapman (The Eve of Saint Hyacinth) investigates a man who claims to be the supposedly dead son of a rich Bristol weaver. The weaver accepts him, but his daughter suspects a subterfuge aimed at claiming half her father's money. A solid series entrant.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Roger Chapman, an itinerant peddler with a penchant for solving the most perplexing puzzles, revisits a mystery he first encountered in Death and the Chapman (1991). Missing for six years and presumed dead, Clement Weaver, the son of a prominent Bristol businessman, reappears and thus ignites a fierce family feud. Disinherited by her ailing father in favor of her conveniently resurrected brother, Alison Weaver beseeches Roger to unmask the man she believes to be an imposter. Since he had originally declared Clement Weaver dead, a doubly intrigued Chapman reopens a previous investigation to solve two intertwined mysteries and salvage his own sense of pride. Another tautly woven medieval whodunit distinguished by Sedley's meticulous historical detailing. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312276842
• ISBN 13: 9780312276843
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256