Synopsis
Brother Athelstan, a young medieval Dominican monk who moonlights as a clerk to the coroner, assists in murder investigations and comes to understand how dark and villainous the human heart can be.
Reviews
The stage of this atmosphere-drenched series opener is dominated by the city of London: a fetid, 14th-century melting pot brimming with all manner of life, high and low. Throughout Harding's supremely evocative, scrupulously researched portrait, the stench of the huddled masses is practically palpable. But there's more foul here than the city's streets: Sir Thomas Springall, a nobleman of the court, has been poisoned, and the servant who bore the fatal cup has apparently committed suicide. Enter Sir John Cranston, the London coroner who makes Jack Falstaff look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and whose appetite for drink is reflected in his ample girth. Together with his clerk, Brother Athelstan, a canny priest with a "nose for mischief," Cranston ferrets out a fiendish plot that reverberates with intrigue in high places. Minor flaws--the titular architectural feature has scant significance, and Athelstan's character lacks focus--barely detract from this vivid, intricately crafted whodunit. And the book is full of colorful characters such as Watkin the dung collector, Ranulf the ratcatcher and a constable at Tower Bridge who lovingly combs the hair of executed traitors and sings them lullabies.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
P.C. Doherty, writing as Harding, launches yet another historical mystery series, this one featuring a medieval coroner of Falstaffian girth and deplorable manners, Sir John Cranston, and his able assistant, Brother Athelstan, a guilt-riddled Dominican, who takes careful notes of crime scenes, interrogations, and so forth when Sir John is sleeping off a tankard or two too many. In their introductory case, they're sent to investigate a murder/suicide: Sir Thomas, it seems, was poisoned by his servant Brampton, who then, in remorse, killed himself. But if that's so, why are so many others who were present that night also soon found dead? Has any of it to do with the affair between Sir Thomas's widow and his brother? The death of a sodomized page? The blackmailing of the young king's regent, who was conniving for the throne? Sir John and Athelstan painstakingly re-create Sir Thomas's death scene to wrest a confession from the guilty--and reveal a locked-room scenario as cunning as any ever devised by John Dickson Carr. Clever puzzle, bustling atmosphere, and one hopes the curmudgeonly Sir John will be toned down and made more likable in future endeavors. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Bursting with energy and drama, this 14th-century historical drama introduces an unlikely pair of sleuths: Brother Athelstan, friar at a poverty-stricken London church, and coroner Sir John Cranston. Their inquiry into the poisoning death of a powerful merchant takes them to mansion and hovel alike, facing deceptive nobles, crafty priests, and assorted felons. The pair's intelligence and wit call to mind Ellis Peters's more subdued Brother Cadfael, but they live in a rowdy city environment more reminiscent of Edward Marston. Great escape from the author, under the name P.C. Doherty, of The Whyte Harte ( LJ 1/89).
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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