Review - Ellis PETERS - "The Potter's Field"

Publ: 1988
My own copy
ISBN: 978-0-7515-2733-9
Genre: Historical mystery
Pages: 229p
Rating: ***** ***


The last of the Cadfael books for me to read (though the 17th of 20 in the series). A wonderful cosy crime / mystery series set in medieval Shrewsbury in the time of King Stephen.

As an aside - the covers of one of the publications of this series is among my favourite series covers.

ELLIS PETERS see The Will and the Deed

Review - Ellis PETERS – “The Holy Thief”

Publ: 1992
My own copy (from charity shop)
ISBN: 0 7515 0372 X
Genre: Historical crime
Pages: 275p
Continuing the Cadfael series
Rating: ***** **


A Medieval whodunit - Number 19 in the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael. The stories are cosily predictable. I do like the covers in the series that has calligraphy letters like this one. They remind me that it is time to do another article about covbers some time.

The plot - as found in Fantastic Fiction:-
At the height of the hot summer of 1144, a lucky hit by one of King Stephen's archers rids the Fen country of Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, who has amassed his castles and gold by robbing rich and poor alike. Thus, the Benedictine abbey at Ramsey, long used as a den for Geoffrey's raggle-taggle marauders, is returned in a thoroughly ruined state to the good brothers of that order. The news comes to Brother Cadfael or the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul in Shrewsbury in the person of the dour, raw-boned Brother Herluin who is soliciting funds and aid to restore Ramsey Abbey to its former splendor. Of much more interest to Cadfael is Herluin's companion, Brother Tutilo, a slightly built lad with a guileless face surrounded by a profusion of brown curls. But Brother Cadfael, long a shrewd judge of character, notes on that brow an intelligence that bespeaks more of mischief than innocence, and he muses that this Brother Tutilo bears watching. The arrival of a French troubadour, his servant, and a girl with the voice of an angel gives Cadfael a feeling in his wise bones that something is about to happen. It does. The late autumn rains bring flood waters right to the altar where the abbey's most precious possession reposes - the bones of Saint Winifred. Only Brother Cadfael knows that moving the holy relic can expose a long hidden secret. He never envisions that the results of disinterment will be the theft of the cherished bones...and murder. Suspicion quickly falls on a guilty-looking Brother Tutilo. But did he do it?

Ellis PETERS – see The Will and the Deed

Ellis PETERS - The Hermit of Eyton Forest

1987
0 7540 1590 4
253p
Rating: ***** **
Number 14 in the Brother Cadfael series.

ELLIS PETERS – see The Will and the Deed

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.