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Setting out for the Saint Giles leper colony outside Shrewsbury, Brother Cadfael has more pressing matters on his mind than the grand wedding coming to his abbey. Yet as fate would have it, Cadfael arrives at Saint Giles just as the nuptial party passes the colony's gates. He sees the fragile bride, looking like a prisoner between her two stern guardians, and the bridegroom, an arrogant, fleshy aristocrat old enough to be her grandfather. And he quickly discerns that this union may be more damned than blessed. Indeed, a savage murder will interrupt the May-December marriage, and leave Brother Cadfael with a dark, terrible mystery to solve. The key to the killing--and a secret--is hidden among the lepers of Saint Giles. Now, Brother Cadfael's skills must ferret out a sickness not of the body, but of a twisted soul.… (more)
User reviews
Peters avoids the faults of some historical fiction authors whose characters seem to have modern world views. I think the difference is that other writers often emphasize attitudes and opinions, while Peters focuses on emotions and character traits like love and hatred, compassion and cruelty, fear and comfort, trust and betrayal. Even though I could see early on where the plot was heading and guessed many of the characters' secrets, there were still some surprises along the way. I haven't read many writers who are able to tell a story so well and resolve the problems so satisfactorily. Highly recommended.
Extended review:
Once again we have Brother Cadfael sympathetically befriending young lovers while seeking an elusive culprit in order to clear an innocent falsely accused. The pattern of unlamented victims is becoming
Nonetheless, there are surprising enough twists and turns, beguiling enough characters, and fascinating enough details of setting to keep me coming back. I regularly read a fair number of dense, heavy tomes; these quick, reliable puzzles in more than competent prose are a welcome leavening in my literary diet.
It is 1139, and Brother Cadfael is in charge of the herbarium at the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul of Shrewsbury. His usual assistant, Brother Mark, is serving for a year with the lepers at the
Unlike the common citizens, who shun the lepers, the monks are happy to serve them. As Cadfael reflects, “he knows of leprosies of the heart and ulcers of the soul worse than any of these he poulticed and lanced with his herbal medicines.”
The lepers, like the rest of Shrewsbury, are caught up in the excitement of the wedding of a famous baron and his beautiful, much younger, bride-to-be. But a vicious murder halts the proceedings, and Cadfael, the unofficial coroner and detective of the abbey, must solve the crime. The focus turns to the asylum, since the place everyone wants to avoid is a perfect place to hide.
Evaluation: I love learning about medieval healing arts and customs via this “whodunnit” series. Moreover, without modern technology, the characters have nothing but their minds to help solve crimes, and sharing in their ratiocinations is most entertaining.
Otherwise, not my favorite Cadfael. The reader gets too close a
It's clear, in short order, that not all are in favor of the wedding. Isveta is very young and obviously distressed at the thought of marrying a many nearing 60--one who, furthermore, has all the marks of a brutal person; he deliberately and unprovokedly strikes Lazarus with his whip as teh groom's party passes St. Giles.
One of de Domville's young squires, Joscelin Lucy, is desperately in love with Isveta, who requites his feelings. Joscelin attempts one last meeting with Isveta, in Brother Cadfael's herb garden, before the wedding. The couple are discovered by Isveta's dragon aunt, Agnes Picard and Joscelin is thrown out of de Domville's entourage, reported to the baron by Isveta's equally nasty uncle, Godfrid. In addition, Joscelin faces accusations of theft of a valuable necklace, a wedding gift from the baron to Isveta.
When the wedding does not take place due to the inconvenient murder of de Domville, Joscelin is the immediate suspect. Apprehended, he escapes and an intensive hunt rouses the countryside. But Brother Cadfael is less than convinced of Joscelin's guilt. Joscelin hides at St. Giles as he searches for a way to rescue Isveta from the clutches of her conniving aunt and uncle.
Peters devotes a significant part of the plot to Joscelin's stay at St. Giles, which does provide some illumination of the way lepers lived in the 12th century. It's also a clever plot device to keep her hero hidden until she winds up to the climax. The plot itself is good, with the expected twist(s) at the end. Peters, by this fifth book in the series, has settled into her style of writing and the prose is both gentle and workmanlike; she does evoke a nice sense of medievality without much strain.
What is welcome in this book is a map of Shrewsbury and its environs.
Usually, Peters' heros are young, handsome, and naive, while the women are much more worldly, and quite strong. She reverses herself somewhat in this book. Joscelin is not quite so wide-eyed and innocent, but Isveta is simply there to provide the necessary impetus to the plot--she is the epitome of the helpless female. Granted that this series is not long on complex characterization, but Peters usually manages to do much better than this with her female characters.
We do meet old favorites--Abbot Radulfus and Brother Mark, the latter being the most fleshed-out character in the book aside from Cadfael.
Brother Cadfael, too, has not really developed much in 5 books, but then he doesn't need to. He still is a delightful character in this gentle, lightweight, but entertaining series.
Highly recommended.
This series continues to delight as it gives the reader a peek into the life of a monastery in the Middle Ages.
Nice treatment of the persons suffering from the death sentence (in those days) of Hansen's Disease. Otherwise not really worth the reading. It did not forward the historic setting of the war between the two siblings over the throne.
The plot was a bit predictable although when the murder occurred the
The narration was a good solid effort but at times the voice was a bit soporific.
As with many volumes in this series, there is a map. To better understand the story use all the maps in the previous books as well as this one.
The Leper of St. Giles takes place largely in and
There's a plot twist in this book; a rather major one, but it's telegraphed early on, so that I knew long before it was revealed. It's a good one, but if Peters hadn't split the difference, the early guess would have ruined the story. As it is, Peters seems to have covered her bets and kept that reveal from being absolutely pivotal to the plot, making the ultimate solution a surprise, and a tragic one at that.
A few of the series characters readers enjoy aren't here in this book, but there are other characters that endear themselves to the reader. There's a bit of humor here and there too, making this a much more enjoyable read than the last, St. Peters' Fair, which was a good story but dragged. I'd be best pleased if we saw Bran and Joscelin again, though I'm not counting on it.
The blurb is slightly misleading, but not so much I'll write anything about because there is more than one mystery here, although the main one is the brutal murder of a despicable man. This is
Rereading some of these is helping me attempt to have a 3.5 rating average this year since overall it's only 3.22 which means I've been too busy reading things for challenges even if I don't like them much.
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