Three for a Letter: A John the Eunuch Mystery - Hardcover

Reed, Mary; Mayer, Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1890208825 ISBN 13: 9781890208820

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Pr, 2001

Synopsis

It's 539 AD, and John the Lord Chamberlain finds his investigations hampered by squabbling courtiers, servants with social ambitions, an eccentric host, and an egotistic inventor - not to mention a herd of prophesying goats and a protective whale. The Mithran Anatolius and the excubitor captain Felix only add to John's worries when they fall under the spell of two ambitious women. Can the trio avoid Theodora's wrath as they work to protect a child and stop a heartless killer? Does the solution lie within the villa where all have assembled, back in Constantinople, or in some other world altogether?

About this title

About the Author

Mary Reed and Eric Mayer, already known for their historical short stories which have appeared in the anthologies Royal Whodunnits and Shakespearean Dectectives, and in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, have written four previous short stories featuring John the Eunuch with a fifth due out this Fall. Mary has written scripts for the PBS radio program Weather Notebook and been a featured guest on the PBS program “What D’you Know?” Eric is a former Golden Quill Award winner from the Pennsylvania Newspapers Publishers Association. One for Sorrow is their first full length novel. They live in Pennsylvania.

Reviews

John, Lord Chamberlain to the Emperor Justinian, continues his sixth-century A.D. adventures in this third worthy installment (following One for Sorrow and Two for Joy), in which nimble wits are required not to keep one's job but to keep one's head. John's position is particularly fragile since Justinian's support is notoriously fickle and his consort, the beautiful and dangerous Theodora, despises John. When an entertainment devised for Theodora results in the death of a young royal hostage and the disappearance of Barnabas, the empress's favorite dwarf, John is once again charged with the difficult and delicate task of ferreting out the truth. He is also charged with protecting the life of the remaining hostage, eight-year-old Sunilda, a task made even more daunting by the child's recklessness. Set not in Constantinople but on the nearby estate of a wealthy noble, the authors' latest mystery combines a finely nuanced historical background with a plot of great subtlety. The details of daily life, from food and food preparation to the care and writing of manuscripts, enhance the action. And the ongoing struggle between Christianity (Justinian's state religion) and the pagan rites that play a central role in the plot is particularly well drawn. If there's any flaw it's that John, while a sympathetic protagonist, is too self-contained to really arouse the reader's passions. Nonetheless, those who appreciate strong historical backgrounds and solid plotting will get their money's worth. The Byzantine mosaic art on the jacket is a real plus.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

*Starred Review* Return with us now to sixth-century Constantinople (A.D. 539, to be precise), where two politically important, eight-year-old twins are key players in Emperor Justinian's plans to resurrect the crumbling Roman Empire. However, the emperor's plans seem doomed when one of the twins is murdered. Enter John the Eunuch, the emperor's Lord Chamberlain, to save the day and, he hopes, the empire. This is the third John the Eunuch novel (after One for Sorrow, 1999, and Two for Joy, 2000), and it continues the authors' record of creating near-perfect historical mysteries. These novels are charming mixtures of humor, intrigue, and period detail. Like Ellis Peters and Lindsey Davis (whose own novels are also set in Roman times, although centuries earlier), Reed and Mayer have a solid grasp of the era they are writing about. This helps them avoid the all-too-common failing of historical mysteries: lecturing. It's easy to tell a reader all sorts of things about a particular historical period; it's a lot harder to know what not to tell. Characters in the John the Eunuch novels don't spend time telling each other things they already know, for the benefit of the reader: Reed and Mayer educate us in more subtle ways, and we're having so much fun following the story that we don't even realize we're learning things. An excellent entry in an excellent series. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Pr
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1890208825
• ISBN 13: 9781890208820
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368