Ellis Peters – “The Will and the Deed”

I’m surprised this is the first Ellis Peters I’ve read since starting this Blog in November 2007.
When legendary diva Antonia Byrne's will is read, it contains some unpleasant surprises for her nearest and dearest - none of them get quite what they were expecting. When the mourners become snowbound in the tiny mountain village, one of their number has lethally sinister intentions.

ELLIS PETERS is a pseudonym used by Edith Pargeter. Ellis Peters is best known for her twenty Brother Cadfael mysteries set in the twelfth century Benedictine monastery of Shrewsbury.
(I’m surprised that I haven’t read a Cadfael since starting this Blog. I must have read them all – bar the couple I have still to read – before last November; doesn’t time fly!)
The Cadfael Mysteries
1. A Morbid Taste for Bones (1977)
2. One Corpse Too Many (1979)
3. Monk's Hood (1980)
4. St. Peter's Fair (1981)
5. The Leper of Saint Giles (1981)
6. The Virgin in the Ice (1982)
7. The Sanctuary Sparrow (1982)
8. The Devil's Novice (1983)
9. Dead Man's Ransom (1984)
10. The Pilgrim of Hate (1984)
11. An Excellent Mystery (1985)
12. The Raven in the Foregate (1986)
13. The Rose Rent (1986)
14. The Hermit of Eyton Forest (1987)
15. The Confession of Brother Haluin (1988)
16. The Heretic's Apprentice (1989)
17. The Potter's Field (1989)
18. The Summer of the Danes (1991)
19. The Holy Thief (1992)
20. Brother Cadfael's Penance (1994)



Edith Mary Pargeter, BEM (September 28, 1913 in Horsehay, Shropshire, England October 14, 1995) was a prolific author of works in many categories, especially history and historical fiction, and was also honoured for her translations of Czech classics; she is probably best known for her murder mysteries, both historical and modern. Born in the village of Horsehay (Shropshire, England), she had Welsh ancestry, and many of her short stories and books (both fictional and non-fictional) were set in Wales and its borderlands, and/or have Welsh protagonists.
During World War II, she worked in an administrative role in the Women's Royal Naval Service, and received the British Empire Medal - BEM. Pargeter wrote under a number of pseudonyms.