Another medieval mystery in which a brothel is depicted as a nice place to live and work and a whoremistress as a good person to work for? But that it seems is how it was in the Old Priory Guesthouse, and if I had to work in such a place I would certainly choose the beautiful but very human Magdalene la Bâtarde to be my abbess/protectress.

One of the girls, Sabina, who is blind, has recently formed a permanent and exclusive relationship with a wealthy saddler, Master Mainard, and moved out of the Guesthouse. Their love blossomed from a strange and touching start when the hideously birthmarked Mainard found at last someone who was not repelled by his appearance, and the blind Sabina found someone for whom her handicap was something to be treasured rather than tolerated. But when Mainard’s wife is brutally murdered, Magdalene finds herself defending Mainard, whom she likes and trusts, and taking part in the ensuing investigation. Being a whore and thereforepersona non grata in polite society, she is obliged to call on one of her circle of admirers, Sir Bellamy of Itchen (“Bell”) for assistance. Bell talks to Sabina:

‘You know, Sabina, it is Mainard who had the best reasons to want her dead.’

‘And I,’ Sabina said stoutly. ‘I told you I wanted to kill her.’

‘Because you expected Master Mainard to marry you?’

‘Marry me?’ She turned her face toward him, astonishment showing in her voice and every line of her body, even though her eyes could not open in amazement. ‘Why would Mainard want to marry me? I was a whore.’

The mystery is standard – the victim a vicious woman, a devil, whom everyone is more than happy to see dead – but it is well-narrated and it is firmly set in its time, depending as it does on both Stephen and Matilda demanding people’s allegiance and accusing them of treason if they fail to give it.

Perhaps the wonderful thing about this book, though, is the description of life in the whorehouses of medieval Southwark, both the good ones and the appalling ones. Take this snippet as an example. Sir Bellamy has just intervened between a whore called Diot and her whoremaster, saving her from a vicious beating …

Before [Diot] could decide whether her fear of this “special” house was greater than her fear of angering a man powerful enough to cow the whoremaster, he was back with a most beautiful, elegantly dressed woman.

‘Good God, what is this?’ Magdalene asked, stopping short when she saw Diot.

‘Never mind the dirt,’ Bell said hastily. ‘It will wash away. More important, listen to her speak. I do not know what has befallen her, but if she did not begin in a gentleman’s Household, I will kiss her as she is.’

‘Others have not found it so great a sacrifice,’ Diot snapped.

Magdalene’s lips had parted to make a sharp comment to Bell, but she turned her eyes to the woman. The filthy rags and the bruises that could be seen through them had given the impression of an utterly broken creature, but the tart retort to a dominant male and the faultless accent in the Norman tongue started a new train of ideas.

‘You were beaten and cast out of your last place,’ Magdalene said. ‘For what?’

‘Doubtless for refusing to obey orders,’ Bell put in, when Diot hesitated. ‘I saved her another beating, or maybe worse, for refusing to servise the whoremaster and doing some damage to his private parts.’ 

‘It was a whoremistress did this to me,’ Diot said. ‘I had hoped she would be more understanding, but when I refused to eat a man’s dung, she had me beaten, took my clothing and my few farthings, and cast me out like this.’

Magdalene sighed. There was, of course, no way to guess whether the woman’s statement was true. It was certainly not impossible. And she had now seen through the dirt what Bell’s male eyes had more quickly discerned  that the woman was beautiful.

[...]

‘It was that house on Dockside opposite Botolph’s Warf,’ Bell said. 

Magdalene shrugged. ‘Well, you would not want to go back there in any case.’

‘Looking like this, only that kind of place will take me,’ Diot remarked bitterly.

‘Yes, that is true. Which is why I will offer you a bath and a decent gown.’

‘How much?’ Diot asked, her eyes suddenly brighter with eagerness.

‘For caritas. I am a woman and a whore also.’

Super.

There is no “who-dun-it” here. When the body of a fourteen-year-old prostitute and drug-addict named Tracy is washed up on the river shore, we already know who did it: a trio of corrupt and brutal senior police officers. The drama lies in the fight to the death – literally – between them and investigative journalist Rosie Gilmour, who is determined not to let Tracy’s death be covered up by the establishment. Or the subsequent death of another prostitute, the only witness.

But then her investigations into Tracy’s background reveal that other powerful establishment figures have access to the children at the orphange Tacy had fled, and are using them for their sickening paedophile games.

A great start to a new series. Rosie is tough – but not that tough; she too had a horrifying childhood. Let’s say courageous rather than tough. And she has two very attractive male friends: Adrian, a ruthless Bosnian hardman who would give his life for her; and TJ, a wandering minstrel – a busker with itchy feet whom she is slowly falling for in a big way.

TJ doesn’t appear in the sequel, To Tell the Truth, but Adrian does – in the nick of time, and saves Rosie’s life yet again.

This time the setting is the south of Spain, the Costa del Sol, the whole place seemingly owned and run by crime bosses from Russia, Albania and – yes, you guessed – an old enemy from Glasgow who had to leave the UK in a hurry after Rosie flashed his face on the front page of her newspaper.

A little girl, the daughter of two ‘Brits’ on holiday, has been kidnapped, just picked up and carried away while playing on the beach. Again, Rosie’s investigations spread out ever further like the ripples when a stone is dropped into a pond. Like the Moroccan rent-boy who, at the time of the kidnapping, was giving the British Home Secretary a blow-job on a balcony overlooking the beach, said Home Secretary being all-too-chummy with a Russian billionaire whose manifold business interests include trafficking girls in from eastern Europe for the straight sex trade and small children for the paedophile industry.

One of the great things about these books is that the large supporting cast are all rounded and memorable characters. I does not make me want to go rushing off to the Costa del Sol, I would have too good an idea now of what is going on all around me. I am still planning to visit Glasgow, though!

But let’s begin with a typical example of the book – and the author – in action (and modern Delhi in action!) to get a feel of the book, the author and the place. Not to mention the protagonist, one Vish Puri, “India’s most private investigator”.

Here he is off to meet a contact at the Golden Greens Gold course, of which Puri was not a member although he would have liked to be [...] Not for the sake of playing (secretly he couldn’t stand the game – the ball was always ending up in those bloody ponds), but for making contacts among India’s new money, the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing)-cum-MNC (Multi-National Corporation) crowd. [...] In Delhi, all big deals were now being done on the putting greens. Playing golf had become as vital a skill for an Indian detective as picking a lock. In the past few years, he had had to invest in private lessons, a set of Titleist clubs and appropriate apparel, including Argyll socks.

His chauffeur, who rejoices in the name of Handbrake, needs to ask the way.

Soon after turning off the NOIDA expressway, Handbrake spotted a Vespa moped with a Domino’s box on the back and pulled up next to it at a red light.

‘Brother, where is Galden Geens Galfing?’ he shouted in Hindi to the delivery boy over the sound of a noisy, diesel-belching Bedford truck.

His question was met with an abrupt upward motion of the hand and a questioning squint of the eyes.

‘Galden Geens Galfing, Galden Geens Galfing,’ repeated Handbrake.

The delivery boy’s puzzlement suddenly gave way to comprehension: ‘Aaah! Golden greens Galf Carse!’

‘Ji!’

‘Sectorrr forty-tooo!’

‘Brother! Where is forty-toooo sectorrr?’

‘Near Tulip High School.’

‘Where is Tulip High School?’

‘Near Om Garden!’

‘Brother, where is Om Garden?’

The delivery boy scowled and shouted in an amalgam of English and Hindi: ‘Past Eros Cinema, sectorrr ninteen! Turn right at traffic light to BPO Phase three! Enter farty-too through backside!’

I don’t usually quote so much, but I love this. Suddenly I miss India and Delhi.

Rinku, the contact Puri is to meet, is a childhood friend who had followed his father into the building business and, during the boom of the past ten years, made a fortune putting up low-cost multi-storey apartment blocks in Gurgaon and Dwarka.

Few industries are as dirty as the Delhi construction business and Rinku had broken every rule and then some. There was hardly a politician in north India he had not done a shady deal with; not a District Collector or senior police-wallah to whom he hadn’t passed a plastic bag full of cash.

At home in Punjabi Bagh where he still lived in his father’s house with his mother, wife and four children, Rinku was the devoted father and larger than life character who gave generously to the community, intervened in disputes and held the biggest Diwali party in the neighbourhood. But he also owned a secret second home, bought in his son’s name, a ten-acre ‘farmhouse’ in Mehrauli. It was here that he entertained politicians and bureaucrats with gori prostitutes.

Oh, yes. And the case, in this book?

A wealthy lawyer in Jaipur stands accused of murdering a young woman who worked as a maid in his family home. That is to say she worked for his wife (a prize bitch) and not for him. Because this lawyer has been crusading against corruption among the police and judiciary he is unpopular, to say the least, in many quarters. It transpires that there is actually no evidence whatever against him (the girl simply disappeared) but this will not save him. Only her reappearance can do that.

Vish Puri is charged with bringing the reappearance about. But how? All they know of her is her first name – Mary – and that, as the lawyer’s wife, Mrs Kasliwal, puts it, she is a “Bihari-type”.

When Puri asks her to elaborate, she tells him ‘So many servants these days are coming from Bihar and other such backward places. Naturally I assumed she was from there, also, being so dark.’

‘She was very dark, is it?’

‘Like kohl, Mr Puri,’ she said with disdain. ‘Like kohl.’

Wonderful. And after reading it you are left with a picture of modern Delhi comparable to the Victorian London conjured up by reading Sherlock Holmes.

In this, the fourth (and very sadly, the last) of the Adelia Aguilar medieval mysteries, King Henry orders Adelia to accompany his daughter, the ten-year-old Princess Joanna, on the long, long journey from England to Sicily.

Throughout the eight years that she has spent in England, Adelia has yearned to return to Sicily, her home, far away from the cold barbarian north where she is not even allowed to practise as a physician, but Henry has always forbidden it, claiming he needs her, his “Mistress of the Art of Death”.

And now that he is letting her go, it is only to accompany and be there for his daughter should she fall ill somewhere along the way, while he ensures that Adelia will eventually return by keeping her daughter with him in England. Or rather with his wife, Queen Eleanor, who is a prisoner herself, having supported her son Duke Richard in his attempted coup d’etat.

Also making the journey are the Bishop of St Albans – Adelia’s lover, and the father of her daughter; the legendary sword Excalibur, a gift for the King of Sicily; an old enemy of Adelia’s, now impenetrably disguised, whose sole aim in life is to bring about her death; and a mysterious sea captain, who seems at first  to be little more than a pirate with the royal blessing, but who is to take the party on by ship from the south of France to Sicily.

Before they reach the coast, however, many catastrophes befall them – not least of which, for Adelia, is witnessing a “witch” being burnt alive in the town square at Aveyron, and knowing she is to be next.

This is a perfect “medieval mystery”, with many of the same colourful characters as in the previous books (Ariana Franklin’s Henry II is totally unforgetable, for me anyway, the definitive Henry II) and a host of new ones, including all the people in Palermo whom we had only heard about, and wondered about, before but now meet in person.

Read this book. And if you haven’t read the other three, read them first, in order. They are precious, and there will be no more.

(Be careful, this book has also been published under the title A MURDEROUS PROCESSION)

This is real Sci Fi. Read it. It is a stunning story. Now I am waiting for the sequel – there must be one, set on this same unforgettable world. And please, Andrew, make the sequel longer!

Click on the image for the Kindle link.

Two born outsiders, Merewyn, a Cornish girl who believes herself descended from King Arthur through her father Uther (in the 10th century, Cornwall was still not considered part of England), and Romieux of Provence, known outside Provence as Rumon, “an atheling of the right line of Cerdic and Alfred”, move in an unhappy dance through a wonderful cast of insiders ranging from Cornish peasants and Celtic monks through Viking warriors and Norse farmers to nuns and an archbishop (St Dunstan himself), princes and princesses, kings and queens.

What I enjoyed most were the descriptions of life in places like the Culdee colony on the Merrimac River, originally settled by Irish and Scottish monks who refused to compromise with Rome, and now at the end of the tenth century being augmented by Norse settlers; and of life in Iceland, and among the earliest settlers in Greenland. Yes, we meet Erik the Red, founder of the colony on Greenland, and his son Leif, the first Norseman to set out for America on purpose rather than be blown there by accident. 

Also wonderful are her descriptions of Glastonbury, a popular pilgrimage centre in the 9th-11th centuries, “second only to Rome”, (and this book was published in 1965, before the Glastonbury Festival and all the blah-blah-blah, at a time when – so everyone assures me – just a few hippies used to find their way to “Avalon”); and, forming a background to the whole novel, the story of how the evil (but irresistible) Queen Alfrida, King Edgar’s widow, and her son Ethelred the Unready, managed to seize the throne and in so doing set in train the collapse and overthrow of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom.

Beautifully imagined and written by one of the truly great historical novelists. And I want to insert here a detail from the rather tatty cover of my grandmother’s old copy of Avalaon – the one I first read! – because it is just how I imagine Merewyn and Rumon.

Back home in the States, she is again the target of a terrorist attack, this time with her family – her husband, Mike, and her son, Greg. Greg has Asperger’s Syndrome, which makes him unemotional and uncommunicative, but when he does take an interest in a problem his brain works faster and better than anyone else’s.

Again they are rescued. But this second attack has Charlotte so worried that she decides to disappear, taking the boy Greg with her, but not her husband. She and Mike seem to be on little more than speaking terms.

The place she chooses to disappear to is Delhi! I was grabbed! I love Delhi. And it is true, anyone could disappear in Delhi. Well, almost anyone. Not Charlotte, though, her face is too well known, she is just too much of a celebrity. And someone is there in Delhi with her, not hunting her, stalking her. But so is her mysterious protector …

I finished the book without any trouble, enjoyed it, in fact, and would recommend it to anyone. However, I did have a problem with it. At first, of course, I identified with Charlotte, but she turns out to be in many ways a very childish and stupid woman. More and more I found I was viewing the action through the eyes of her protector. And this is the first of a series. I don’t think I could bear another whole book filled with Charlotte’s egotistical nonsense. But another book featuring the real heroes of this book – her son, and of course, that mysterious protector? That I would jump at.

There is a sequel, “Sons of Zadok”, but it is labelled, as is this one, “A Charlotte Ansari Thriller”, so I don’t think I’ll risk it. But if there is anyone out there who has read it and can assure me that a large part is played in it by Charlotte’s protector (whose name, by the way, is Gideon, and he is of the Sicarii – why have I been pussy-footing around this, it’s not exactly a spoiler?) then do, please, let me now.

This book is set in post-Arthurian times when Merlin was still bound by Nimuë’s enchantments and the Grail still something a knight might reasonably set out in quest of. It is a period of which I am very fond, but the only other time I had tried to read a Judith Tarr novel, I gave up after a few pages! I expected the same thing to happen here.

It did not.

Far from it. After the first few pages, I could not put Kingdom of the Grail down.

It is the story of Roland, hero of the epic poem La Chanson de Roland in which Roland dies when he is ambushed by Saracens in the pass of Roncesvalles in the high Pyrenees. Only here he does not die: the story goes on, made wonderful, made mythical, by Judith Tarr’s own brand of magic. Roland, a descendant of Merlin, is both enchanter and shape-shifter – it is in his blood – and warrior – he is Count of the Breton Marches and one of the King’s Companions of Charles the Great of France.

A beautiful woman, Sarissa, appears at the court in France, bearing a magical sword, Durandel, and offers it as a prize. Roland wins it and becomes both her champion and her lover.  But what does she represent? What force, what kingdom, is he now champion of?

As the story moved on, I noticed how much Tarr has been influenced by such writers as Tolkein and Lewis. Everything leads up to a final battle between the forces of Good and Evil that is the best I have come across since the closing chapters of Lord of the Rings and The Last Battle which brings the Narnia books to a close. And her wizard (Merlin = Gandalf) and wicked sorcerer (Ganelon, tool of the Dark Lord) are the real thing, as is her man born to be king (Roland) of the enchanted land whose ancient king (Parsifal) is dying, waiting only for his successor to take up the sword and fight the great war that he himself no longer can – though before that can happen, Roland, not fully trusted yet by Sarissa and blaming her for the nassacre of his friends at Roncesvalles, flees in the form of a hawk and is for a while lost to mankind, his home the wilderness, the wasteland. “He had been human once. He had no particular desire to wear that shape again …”

But this is not mere imitation. It is great writing of the same genre. It has everything, and I cannot recommend it too highly.

I recently came across three of Paul Doherty’s Brother Athelstan books that some kind traveller with excellent taste had left behind in Kolkata (for new members, I’m in India!). I picked them up at one of the second-hand bookshops down by the Maidan – in Sudder Street, I think. Strange, the things people carry with them when they come here, and subsequently escape into. Homesickness for England? Homesickness for the medieval world? Both, certainly, in my case. Alright, I could catch a plane and be in London in hours. Somehow, though, that is not the London I miss.

I have never fitted in in modern London. While I was growing up (I was born in 1975) I witnessed what little grace was left from the post-war years and the 60s destroyed by the brutal philistinism of the Thatcher years. It is, I believe, recovering slowly, but when I was a kid I used to escape into the past with books like Georgette Heyer’s unforgettable Regency stories, then ancient times, ancient Israel (Frank Slaughter’s Biblical novels!) and ancient Britain. By the time I left school and made my first trip out here on my own (I took a year off, a gap year, before they became fashionable) I had started reading books set in the times my wonderful grandmother used to tell me about – the times before, during, and immediately after the Second World War.

Then, finally, while I was at university, my tutor told me to read Anya Seton’s Katherine, and I was hooked. I had found the Middle Ages, and I knew at once that my grandmother was right: she believed in reincarnation, and I felt so completely at home in medieval Britain that I knew I had been there before, had lived not one but possibly a series of lives including one in the second half of the 14th century and one in Saxon times during the clash between Nordic paganism and Christianity.

What a ridiculously long introduction!

Anyway, Doherty’s Brother Athelstan books have always rung absolutely true to me. This is exactly what London was like in the 1370s and 80s. So you can imagine my delight when I found not one but three, two of which I had never read before, in a pile of books beneath a picture of Goddess Saraswati. One was this, The Devil’s Domain, and the others The Field of Blood and The House of Shadows, the ones which follow it in the series. And none of them had been reviewed for this site. Perfect. (In fact, I found that while we had reviewed a great many Doherty books, these that I now clutched in my hand would be the very first from the “Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan” series.

Some background: Brother Athelstan is a Dominican Friar and is the priest in charge of the Church of St Erconwald in the extremely sleazy (but homely) suburb of Southwark, which lies south of the river, at the other end of the bridge from the City of London itself. His twin attributes of a razor sharp mind and total incorruptibility have gained him a reputation as an entirely honest investigator, and among those who bring their unsolved and apparently insoluble problems to him are Sir John Cranston, the Lord Coroner of London.

In this particular book, The Devil’s Domain, the phrase “the devil’s domain” means different things to different people. To Brother Athelstan, it seems to be this world, with all its suffering and cruelty. To his friend Sir John, it is parts of this world, like the area known as Whitefriars, on the north bank between the City itself and Westminster (much worse than the more notorious Southwark), and the house ruled over by the evil Vulpina. To the group of French naval officers held captive while the authorities await their ransom money from France, it is Hawkmere Manor, the dismal house where they are imprisoned.

“The authorities” at this time, of course, being John of Gaunt, the Regent. And when one of the captives is poisoned, he, John of gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, summons Cranston and Athelstan to investigate. It seems that the French themselves suspect one of the captives of being a traitor, a secret English agent.

Then another is murdered with the same poison.

Meanwhile, the historical background produces a sub-plot. The Peasants’ Revolt is brewing and ready to come to a head, and Athelstan’s church is being used as a meeting place by some of the leaders of the revolutionaries – starving peasants at the end of their tether – now all ready to pour out of Essex and Kent and into London. When this comes to John of Gaunt’s ears, he wonders whether Athelstan is involved. After all, the little priest’s symapthies openly lie with the poor and oppressed.

In another sub-plot, a prostitute named Beatrice, “a quiet, rather gentle whore who sometimes dressed as a nun to please her customers”, makes a brief but tragic appearance.

And behind it all lurks an elusive assassin known as Mercurius.

This is Paul Doherty doing what he is best at, the authentic medieval mystery. No one can do it better.

Anyone out there who has read a few of my reviews will know that when I am reading fiction – any kind of fiction – I have to identify. Preferably with the main character, the protagonist and/or narrator. Now you wouldn’t think it would be easy for me to identify with Uhtred of Bebbanburg, and you would be right. Uhtred is the ultimate alpha male, with flawed superhero traits thrown in.

All right, when in the mood, I do find an authentic alpha male appealing, I admit that, so – again, when in the right mood – I do enjoy these books. And of course I identify with the women in his life. Imagine myself in their place. Nice. Where was I? Oh, yes.

Years passed between my reading of the first four books in this series, up to and including Sword Song, and my being asked the other day to write something about the last two books in the Uhtred saga  for MedievalMysteries.com. It took me a moment to remember who Uhtred was. Ah, yes. Last heard of married to the gorgeous pagan, Gisela.

Uhtred, too, is a pagan, a worshipper of Thor/Thunor. Which does not endear him to the Church Militant – and it was very militant in that day and age, but only in persecuting pagans and heretics. People like Uhtred and his wife. When it comes to defending Wessex and Mercia from the invading Danes, the Church (and their puppet King Alfred) is worse than useless. And Alfred, who is not a total puppet, always ends up sending for Uhtred. But not till the last moment, when all that his pious advisors have told him has proved wrong. A bit like putting off going to an alternative practitioner until you are on your deathbed.

Naturally, Uhtred saves the day, and Wessex, and England – and the Church, for these Danes are pagans! But does anyone ever show any understanding or gratitude?

No. With one exception. Aethelflaed, Alfred’s daughter, unhappily married to the wimp ruler of Mercia (giving Alfred control of Mercia), is a fervent admirer and supporter. And lover.

So now we have two I identify with, Gisela and Aethelflaed. Up all night reading.

And at three in the morning (my time) another woman enters the picture. A tall, lithe, feral, sorceress named Skade. You can read about her, and Uhtred’s dealings with her, and hers with him, and how he defends Wessex from Earl Haesten “the earsling” and Harold Bloodhair (totally disgusting) in The Burning Land.

Then comes Death of Kings. Alfred the Great is dying and the situation is this: Alfred wants his eighteen-year-old son Edward to succeed him. But Alfred has a nephew, Aethelwold, the son of his elder brother, the previous king, who believes – with some justification – that he should inherit the throne. Alfred cannot insist that Edward is heir by right, because that would mean that Alfred should never have been King, that the nephew should have been King all along. In order to succeed his father, Edward will need the support of the thanes and especially of a war-lord like Uhtred. But does Uhtred really believe that Edward will make a good king?

And then there is Aethelred, Aethelflaed’s husband, the Lord of Mercia, who has given Alfred his word that he will support Edward yet has no intention of doing so, but rather, as Uhtred and Aethelflaed know, of declaring himself King of an independent Mercia. Naturally, the dying Alfred will not believe them. They are sinners.

All Uhtred wants is to be shot of the lot of them – he is from Northumbria and a pagan and the squabbles of the Christian contenders for the thrones of Wessex and Mercia are no concern of his. As he puts it himself, “Fate is strange. I had rejected Christianity. preferring the gods of the Danes, but I loved Aethelflaed, Alfred’s daughter, and she was a Christian and that meant I carried my sword on the side of the cross.“

And even that is not simple. You remember the feral sorceress Skade, in the other book? Here we have a seeress called Erce:

From a deeper cave, from a passage that led into the netherworld, Erce came. She was a girl of such beauty that the breath stopped in my lungs. The dark-haired girl who had ridden me in the night, the long-haired girl, slender and pale, so beautiful and calm and as naked as the blade in my hand and all I could do was stare at her …

Uhtred falls under her spell, which almost brings him – and Wessex – and the England we know and love crashing down like a pack of cards.

She was as beautiful as the summer dawn and as silent as the winter night [...] I could not take my eyes from her. I would have looked on her for all the rest of my life.” But “it was the goddess who turned and vanished into the underworld.

If she had not, we would all be living in Daneland now.