The Virgin in the Ice by Ellis Peters

The Virgin in the Ice
by Ellis Peters
Macmillan, 1982
220 pages

This book has everything: murder, politics, possible elopements and runaways, battles, mysterious heroes, snowstorms, fires, and more. And somehow it all works. Just barely, at points, but as a loyal fan I can overlook the coincidences that show the straining seams of the plot. Because this is Cadfael at his finest, in the dead of winter, with Hugh at his back, and a seemingly untenable tangle of mysteries ahead of him.

We start shortly after the sack of Worcester by Empress Maud's forces, a strike at King Stephen in the seemingly interminable English civil war (we're at the tail end of 1139, for those keeping track.) Refugees from Worcester have made it to Shrewsbury, but three expected refugees have not arrived: a nun from the Benedictine convent at Worcester and her two charges, a noble lady of seventeen years and her thirteen-year-old brother. Their uncle and guardian, a knight recently returned from the Crusades, is desperate to search for them -- but he is for the Empress, and cannot travel in the lands held by the King to search for them without risking capture or death. At the same time, Cadfael is called to the priory at Bromfield to care for a Benedictine brother who has been found stripped naked and beaten near to death in the snow. It is not long, of course, before Cadfael realizes that things are far more dire, and deadly, than they first appear.

I do really love this series. I am extremely attached to the returning characters -- Cadfael especially, but I am also really fond of Hugh -- and as stated in earlier reviews, I tend to grow attached to the characters we meet and leave within the course of one of these novels, as well. Characters like Josce de Dinan are drawn in a few spare lines, but that's all it takes for Peters to make them real people. She does even better with those she follows closely through the book. We spend a fair bit of time with Yves Hugonin, the young boy lost between Worcester and Shrewsbury, and he's a believable, tremendously sympathetic character. His sister is less sympathetic but all the more believable for that, too. We don't see a lot of the Shrewsbury group at all, aside from Hugh, as all the action takes place at Bromfield Priory and environs. It was occurring to me that we haven't really seen anything of Prior Robert, Cadfael's main thorn-in-the-side in the first books, since the advent of Abbot Radulfus, and I wonder if that's because Peters felt she was done with his character and Radulfus has Robert well in hand, or whether there's more Prior Robert in books ahead.

The plot here is, as mentioned above, packed. Perhaps slightly too much so, and if I have any complaint its that the coincidences needed to bring the murder plot to conclusion and those to begin another plot -- that I have to believe will be a series-long side-plot -- just really, really strain even my credulous belief. I'm willing to go with it because the trappings are so excellent, but I'll admit to a raised eyebrow and an eye-roll, particularly at the resolution of the murder plot. This is also possibly because of the dramatic fashion in which it is brought to its end, which seemed a little unnecessary. Though perhaps not out of character for the series, so it's not entirely unexpected, if not entirely forgiven.

What I might call the main plot -- the search for the Hugonin children, which becomes enmeshed in the search for, and need to deal with, a very nasty band of outlaws plaguing the Ludlow region -- is done extremely well. The tension builds until the conclusion to this plot follows entirely from events leading up to it, and even if it's a bit extra dramatic that somehow didn't seem out of place or eye-roll-worthy here. These outlaws are not Robin Hood-like chivalrous bandits; they're nasty thugs, slaughtering, pillaging, raping, and destroying everything and everyone in their path. I had a couple of bad moments where I worried for Hugh, Yves, and especially Brother Elyas, the poor soul Cadfael travels to Bromfield to heal.

An extra bonus was reading this during the best winter we've had here in Southern Ontario in ages. Reading about frozen brooks and deadly storms when we've got two feet of snow outside is a nice alignment. Peters does winter well, and it created a suitably chilling backdrop to the tale. Though I can't help but wonder whether monks got cold draughts up the legs, if they were just wearing their habits all winter? Cadfael's a hardy soul, but that can't have been comfortable.

All in all, great fun. Because the cast is nearly entirely new, you could probably start here with the series if you wished, though you may have less tolerance for coincidental shenanigans than I did if you haven't engaged with the characters and series conventions in previous books. Not deep reading, though not entirely brainless either. The theme here was apportioning blame, and the hubris inherent in taking responsibility for more than your share. Not as deeply explored as I might have liked -- there was too much plot to allow for such introspection -- but nevertheless there. I am, as always, looking forward to the next book, The Sanctuary Sparrow.

Earlier books in the Brother Cadfael Chronicles:
1. A Morbid Taste for Bones
2. One Corpse Too Many
3. Monk's-Hood
4. Saint Peter's Fair
5. The Leper of Saint Giles

The Leper of Saint Giles by Ellis Peters

The Leper of Saint Giles
by Ellis Peters
MacMillan, 1981
223 pages

After a Cadfael outing I found rather lacklustre in Saint Peter's Fair, I'm pleased to report that I was back on happy footing with The Leper of Saint Giles. I read this book extremely quickly -- starting it one night and reading it halfway through, then finishing the next day -- which is certainly one way to read with a baby in the house. The other way seems to take weeks. I am not finding much room in between.

This is the fifth book in the Chronicles, and once again we have a romantic relationship at the heart of the story -- this one a forbidden, between a bride-to-be utterly beaten down by her draconian guardians and the squire of the groomsman. There is murder done, of course, but the pace in this book is very measured and we spend more time pottering around the countryside and learning about herbs and leprosy in the first bit of the book than investigating any crimes. This is fine by me; it's all very interesting, and I like spending time with Cadfael no matter how he's spending it. A little under halfway through, there is a murder -- don't read the blurbs on this book if you don't want to know who gets it in advance -- and then Cadfael, at his own pace, investigates and sees justice done.

I liked this novel not necessarily just for the investigation (which is great, if a little predictable again; at least Cadfael does a far better job of being an active sleuth and observer than in his last outing) but also for the other aspects -- the gentle ruminations on religion and human nature, the vivid supporting characters, and the wonderful setting. Once again, Peters has -- historically accurate or not, though the little reading I've done on this suggests to me that it's more accurate than not -- made life in the Middle Ages accessible and real to the reader, not just a listing of dates and grand names. It's the pacing that I like so much; it's not all deadly danger or dashing battles or unrest. These things are happening or have happened, but as is true today, life continues with its comforts and challenges; people get on. Of course, this being a mystery, sometimes people get offed, too. But it's not necessarily for some grand reason; it's more likely to be something incredibly petty than something on which rides the fate of nations.

In The Leper of Saint Giles, unsurprisingly we learn about those unfortunates who have contracted leprosy or various diseases that look quite like it, and who are legislated away from all contact with healthy people. We learn about how they were treated, some of how they were viewed, and the way they lived. Or at least the way they lived in leper hospices, tended in this case by monks from the nearby abbey. Cadfael, once again, shows himself to be both practical and compassionate towards the unfortunate around him.

I enjoyed the secondary characters this time around as much as ever: unflappable Abbot Radulfus, odious Prior Robert (who isn't given too much leeway to be too odious here), gentle Brother Mark who has taken over care of the leper hospital, having graduated from his position as Brother Cadfael's assistant, and we missed a few -- Hugh is only mentioned in passing, to my chagrin, but I'm sure he'll be back. We're also introduced to Avice of Thornbury, a new sister at a nearby cloister, of whom I'm sure we'll be seeing more. I do so like this gradual ebb and flow of characters around Cadfael at the centre. It feels organic, and very real. Some characters appear and disappear in one book; others hang around and stay connected.

Another win for Brother Cadfael. I need to remember that when I'm having trouble sticking with anything, there are a few authors I can go to for a good read, and Ellis Peters is definitely one of them. I also need to remember that it's okay to go to them, that I don't have to stick with a book I feel I should read at this point, over a book that I know I will be able to enjoy all the way through.

Earlier books in the Brother Cadfael Chronicles:
1. A Morbid Taste for Bones
2. One Corpse Too Many
3. Monk's-Hood
4. Saint Peter's Fair

Saint Peter's Fair by Ellis Peters

We went on vacation. Last year, for this vacation, one of the days was a thunderstorm day. We spent the entirety of it ensconced in the camper, reading. It also helped that I was on antibiotics and miserable and not wanting to get out and hike, especially in the rain, so the reading felt like a reprieve. I read three books that day, for a total of five over the whole vacation.

This year I planned accordingly, and our combined reading material looked like this:


I remind you this is a five day trip, the overriding aim of which is hiking outdoors and watching birds (which was, I must say, extremely successful this year.)

I read one book. I read part of another one (Crocodile on the Sandbank, which turned out to be just on this side of too light for the brain, especially seeing as I knew exactly what was coming) and then switched to what turned out to be the perfect choice: the next Brother Cadfael mystery.

Saint Peter's Fair
by Ellis Peters
Macmillan, 1981
324 pages

I have to confess, this is another book I'd started before and put back down again. For whatever reason, it just wasn't grabbing me, and I'll say right off the top that I don't think this is one of the best in this series I've read. That's not to say it's not thoroughly enjoyable. There were just a few things that stretched credibility well beyond my comfort zone this time.

The basic plot, without any spoilers: the abbey's annual Saint Peter's Fair is gearing up for what looks to be a successful year after a missed year due to the seige reported in One Corpse Too Many. However, the townsfolk, still struggling with major infrastructure problems after the battles, are unhappy that they see no direct part in the tithes and levies that come from the lucrative fair. When a visiting merchant strikes down one of the town's young men (an unfortunate, though not fatal, event) a riot breaks out. Brother Cadfael is, of course, in the thick of it. Then, later that night, the merchant goes missing and is found the next day, the victim of what appears to be a simple street robbery. But the pieces don't add up, some people know quite a lot more than they're telling, and the hunt is on for the perpetrators of the crime as the situation escalates.

As I commented to fishy at one point, I had the mystery (somewhat) solved by the time the murdered man was found, which is to say within the first fifty pages. This isn't ideal, with these books -- at least not in the way it happened here. The one I've enjoyed the most is One Corpse Too Many and that was in large part because I was completely in the dark about the murderer and even the motive for most of the book, despite the foreshadowing that was skillfully employed. I was still definitely in the dark about the motive on this one, as was our intrepid monk. What surprised me, though, and felt out of character, is that Brother Cadfael is normally so infallible at reading character -- and he missed this one completely even when I, as the reader, knew something was wrong. Same with the deputy sherrif, who is as sharp as one could hope in official law. Also, Brother Cadfael felt very much an observer rather than an active solver of this mystery, which also felt out of character. I don't think this is a problem with Cadfael so much as a problem with the plot and other characters, which points to it being an author misstep.

What I missed most, though, was the warmth of feeling I've had for many of the characters in these books in the past. I am not sure whether this was me, or the long break between this book and the last, or that the characters really did read less like people and more like cutouts in a template.

All of that said, this was still an extremely enjoyable way to spend a couple of evenings. I think I am only slightly dissatisfied because the previous entries in the series were so good. The historical part is still fascinating, with the sweeping political landscape -- the part of history that most of us are familiar with, the lives of the grand people -- providing a backdrop for the convincing detail of the lives of the little people. We are becoming familiar with some of the townspeople, and time is passing; characters enter and leave Cadfael's life in the way one would expect a small town and abbey to work. The plot, though I could easily see the bones of it, had enough meat to keep me engaged through the end.

Overall, I wouldn't necessarily start with this one if you've never read a Brother Cadfael mystery, and I wouldn't necessarily have wept to have missed it. But it provided the kind of read I needed at the moment, and I'll quite happily pick up the next in the series on the strength of the three preceeding books.

Earlier books in the Brother Cadfael chronicles:

1. A Morbid Taste for Bones
2. One Corpse Too Many
3. Monk's-Hood

Monk's-Hood by Ellis Peters

On this particular morning at the beginning of December, in the year 1138, Brother Cadfael came to chapter in tranquillity of mind, prepared to be tolerant even towards the dull, pedestrian reading of Brother Francis, and long-winded legal haverings of Brother Benedict the sacristan. Men were variable, fallible, and to be humoured.

So begins Monk's-Hood. And we all know that tranquillity is not exactly what Brother Cadfael is going to come away with this time...

There are few authors who have the gift of writing characters that I am so comfortable with that I feel as though I know them personally. I feel like I could pick [my vision of] Brother Cadfael out of a crowd and approach him like an old friend, head back to his workshop and have a cup of mulled wine and a good long chat, after which I would certainly feel better about the state of humankind and the world. Of course, this might be a challenge because I am female and he is certainly not supposed to be consorting with me in any way shape or form... but a girl can have dreams. There are lots of characters out there that I like, but Cadfael is familiar.

Monk's-Hood is the third of the Brother Cadfael mysteries, and it's easily as strong as the two that came before. A man who is granting his property to the abbey in return for retirement in one of the abbey's cottages ends up dead -- poisoned with one of Cadfael's own apothecary concoctions. Naturally, Cadfael is determined to discover the murderer, and save an innocent boy from being wrongly accused. There are twists and turns and complications, and Cadfael gets himself into more personal trouble that he has yet.

It was a surprisingly fast read -- I spent most of yesterday on it, and I found myself getting up and making tea with the book still in my hand and trying to watch the boiling water out of the corner of my eye while reading with the rest of my attention. Um. Safety first?

One thing I've discovered I really like about Ellis Peters' writing is that she knows how to foreshadow. With her, it's an art. I take exception to extremely heavy foreshadowing ("forebludgeoning") and so it's a bit incredible to me that I don't mind it when she does things that make me say "aha! one of these two is the murderer, and that will be the murder weapon" and then I turn out to be right. In fact, I actually get a bit of a kick out of being right. I think it's partially that sometimes her foreshadowing leads one in the wrong direction -- which turns out to be the right direction, just not in the way that I anticipated. The tangled web is so carefully placed that everything fits perfectly, but the shape of it is only revealed very close to the end.

Another thing I'm discovering as I move (slowly) along in this series is how deeply I feel for the characters. Some, like Prior Robert and his clerk Brother Jerome, inspire such deep irritation and aversion; others, like Abbot Heribert, inspire what I almost might term gentle love. When a character we were introduced to in One Corpse Too Many finally makes an appearance in Monk's-Hood, I physically experienced a huge sigh of grateful relief. I do get emotionally involved in a lot of books I read, don't get me wrong. I get very wrapped up in my reading and can be quite unbecomingly enthusiastic about a book when I'm in the moment. But I truly don't react this viscerally to characters often, and I wonder if it's partially because of the series aspect -- the further I read, the better I know these characters -- but I know it also has to be Peters' skill.

I really recommend these books to pretty much anyone. Reading them leaves me feeling very content. St. Peter's Fair is next and I'm looking forward to it.

Earlier books in the Brother Cadfael chronicles:

1. A Morbid Taste for Bones
2. One Corpse Too Many

One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters

Happy Halloween everyone! I don't have a specific Halloween book (I am allergic to horror) but the next review in the queue is a mystery novel. With bodies! That is the closest we will get, I fear. But it was an excellent mystery, so without further ado...

Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael mysteries have now firmly taken a place on my pantheon of books I know I can turn to when I can't seem to read anything else. I knew I liked them when I read A Morbid Taste for Bones, but One Corpse Too Many has sealed it. These are not heavy books, in that the plot is fast-paced, there are occasionally suspensions of disbelief that must take place (nothing too irritating or obvious), and there is gentle humour and a smattering of romance. I also have confidence that Brother Cadfael will solve his chosen mystery by the end of the book. But they are not featherweight, either. There are moral ambiguities, murky motives, death and justice, and no characters that are either entirely good or entirely evil.

If we go down to the bare bones of the plot, here is what we come up with: the castle at Shrewsbury, sworn to the cause of the absent Empress Maud, is taken by the forces of King Stephen, her cousin and usurper of the throne of England. The captured forces are summarily put to death, and Brother Cadfael is put in charge of giving rites to and laying to rest the 94 unfortunates. However, he discovers a 95th amongst them, a young man who was clearly not among the castle's defenders, and yet has somehow been dumped unceremoniously in with them. He is given leave by King Stephen to discover who the man was, and who killed him and used the mass execution as a cover.

Do not let this plot summary fool you. I've given you a whopping three more sentences than the back of the book gave me, and I am nowhere near to covering the basics. Things are extremely convoluted, as they might be expected to be from the point of view of a man who will not take expected sides, except with the murdered boy, and who has a terrible habit of getting himself involved in everything. And the inventiveness of the plot just blows me away. I saw some things coming but I had the murderer wrong for the first 4/5 of the book (to be fair, Peters is a master of the red herring), and once I realized I was wrong, I was like, "well, then, who the heck?" Threads of plot and character are drawn together seemingly out of nowhere to make a complete and very satisfactory whole. Everything unfolds with perfect grace and timing. And suspense!

Once again, I am completely at home with Cadfael as our main character. I enjoy spending time with him, I find his sense of humour amusing, and I am quite confident that he will manage things in his own time and own way. He is damnably, but not impossibly, clever. That said, this book was even more suspenseful than the last, particularly as Cadfael occasionally does have the initiative stripped out from underneath him at a couple of key points. It makes the reader start to fear that maybe things have gotten out of hand this time. Brother Cadfael, no matter what the reader is doing or feeling (I ate three packages of Rockets candy without realizing it, eyes glued to the page, for example) never panics. So this becomes a very cozy read despite it's fast pace and excitement.

Finally, one last thing to comment on before I cut this review off: I think one of the things I like best about this series is the setting. The year is 1138, so long ago I can barely comprehend it, and yet I know that there were humans fighting wars and making love and art and farming and hunting and reading and writing and learning and praying. All of these things make sense to me logically, but it's a little mind-boggling to comprehend.

To be fair, I don't know how true-to-what-we-know-of-history Peters is. My grasp of medieval life in England is pretty shaky to say the least ("bring out your dead!") so I don't know how much fact is really in these books. But I don't care, because what I do know is that it feels real. She has enough detail to make it clear she's not talking about 20th century Shrewsbury, enough that I can vividly inhabit the setting, but not so much that I feel like she's tossing a textbook on medieval Benedictine life at me. The villagers and farmers are not constantly beaten down, frightened, or unduly ignorant, as I tend to think of peasants in medieval times; they just are. These are ordinary people, living everyday lives, thinking ordinary (or sometimes not so ordinary) things and doing everyday tasks. And I like that because it humanizes history for me. So if it's not exactly accurate, or even if it is, that's okay -- because it makes me think about humanity and continuity and culture in a way I've not been able to before.

And that's probably enough of that. I really enjoyed this book, I'm extremely glad I read it even though it wasn't technically next on the list (or even close to it) and I'm looking forward to reading Monk's-Hood when the time comes.

A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters

My mother reads mysteries. She is my authority when it comes to a good mystery. So when I was wandering through the stacks at the local public library the other night, not quite ready to start in on the giant tome about Egyptian ruins that sits next on my pile, the name Ellis Peters caught my eye. I remembered the Brother Cadfael mysteries from my mother's reading pile at the bedside, and I figured it was time to try one for myself. A crime-solving medieval monk? I'm in!

A Morbid Taste for Bones is the first of the Brother Cadfael series. We are introduced to the good brother in his monastery garden, in a somewhat clumsy but informative exposition scene in which we learn that Cadfael is a relatively recent convert to the abbey at Shrewsbury, having been a soldier during the crusades and the captain of a military ship, among other (perhaps less savoury?) exploits that are only vaguely hinted at here. He is a patient, kind, very shrewd older Welshman with a love of gardening and perhaps a little bit of a love for mischief.

The bones in question belong to one Saint Winifred, a minor Welsh saint, who is deemed the patron saint of the Shrewsbury Abbey by its zealous and ambitious Prior, Robert. Suspecting trouble, Cadfael gets himself included in the company sent to retrieve Winifred's remains, ostensibly as the only fluent Welsh speaker available. Needless to say, the retrieval of the relics does not go as smoothly as the prior might have hoped, murder is done, and Cadfael sets himself the task of making things right.

I am thoroughly enchanted by Brother Cadfael. He is a delightful character, well-drawn and pleasant to spend time with. He exhibits enough scepticism that I can relate (I wasn't expecting to relate to a Benedictine monk), is observant but not superhumanly so, enjoys his comforts and his garden, is sympathetic to those who deserve it, and tolerant of those who do not. In other words, he's a comfortable, comforting hero who makes the story worth reading. Furthermore, Peters does a great job with the secondary characters, giving them distinct personalities and motives, making us care about those she wants us to care about.

The mystery isn't one of those rush-to-the-end things, but it's interesting, and there are a number of twists and somewhat unexpected turns along the way. I was definitely surprised at the way things ended for the murderer, and at first was a little frustrated (I can't say more without spoilers) but I think it does work out. The resolution is clever and though the loose ends all get tied up, it's not in a completely unbelievable way.

I also really enjoy how Peters uses the credulity of some of her more devout characters to make what otherwise might seem crazy believable to us, the 20th (or, now, 21st) century reader; yet she also leaves a little bit of room for mystery that seems plausible to both Cadfael and the reader. There are no thunderbolts or deus ex machinas at work here -- there's just a hint of something that might be Mystery but also might be ordinary humans doing extraordinary things. She doesn't hit us over the head with it but it makes sense given the context -- the 12th century and a comfortably sceptical monk. I should mention, by the way, that Cadfael doesn't come across as a character written by a writer in the 1970s, which is a trap that historical authors sometimes slip into. Peters has given him the benefit of being well-traveled and well-aged to create a character that views things with the objectivity and bemusement of wisdom; he doesn't do anything outside of what we might expect.

One more thing to mention: I like Peters' sense of humour. It's very dry, and might almost be missed. She sets things up with long sentences, lots of description, and lulls the reader into complacency before delivering a short, sharp little barb. It's not slapstick, there are no setups and punchlines -- it's just always there, never quite absent but not garishly obvious.

The next in this 20-volume-long series is One Corpse Too Many, and I've got it on hold at the library now.