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Ernest William Hornung (1866-1921) was an excellent Victorian author who is now mainly remembered for his Raffles stories (if he is remembered at all). Before Raffles, though, in 1896 Hornung wrote this wonderful story. This story is exciting, with a wonderful mixture of adventure and suspense that will leave you on the edge of your seat!

I must add one word of warning, though. Being such an old book, it does reflect a society with different standards than our present one. Particularly, the story does involve an African character who is repeatedly referred to by the now discredited “n-word.” So, a certain amount of forbearance is required when reading this book.

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This is clearly a “setting up” book – i.e. you’re introduced to the main characters, their relationships are established, their world is established. I was willing to cut the book some slack therefore, in the sometimes tedious descriptions and motive-explaining. Like with any series, you have to learn who the people are in the beginning, so that their actions and reasons in subsequent books make sense to you.

You have a Templar who has hidden out after the infamous Friday the 13th mass destruction of his order. He’s returned to his family holding in England to retire there in anonymity. You also have a 30-something local authority person who is married with a young daughter, who handles all law issues in the land. Just like in Cadfael and other mystery series, the two team up to figure out “who done it”. The Templar – Baldwin – is world wise and very intelligent. The local – Simon – is a bit dense but has a good enough heart and wants to plow through to bring justice.

I love the medieval era so I did have several issues with historical accuracy here. I like to be immersed in the “time culture” when I read about olden times – but it’s often more like modern people had time-travelled to the past and were living there. The wife harasses the husband for doing his job – tracking down a murderer, remember – rather than playing with the daughter. People always seem to know exactly what time it is, when many people didn’t have access to a town clock, never mind personal timepieces. There are many other issues like this. It’s not that they were huge, gaping holes – but it was more like water torture where each little thing struck you to build up.

I did notice the typos and such, but I don’t mind those. It did seem to indicate that a better editor was needed for the series.

In general my big issue is how characters quickly dismiss important clues, or completely give up on certain issues, when we’re talking about murders which are very rare (according to the characters). Surely they should care about each clue! Also, the Abbott’s murder seemed rather extreme in the context of this situation. The long winded explanation for it was also a bit much. I agree that the Abbott needed to be punished, but I can imagine many scenarios where his punishment was done in a way that was proper for the story setting, instead of coming across as a raving lunatic attack.

In any case, I do like the setting and always have hope for an author to learn as he goes, so I will plow ahead with the series!

Rating:

I have mixed feelings about this book. It has tremendous promise, with two interesting (though not yet fully developed) characters and the relationship between them to form the core of the stories. But the book read like a first draft. It needed editing, polishing and paring down to bring the story to life.

For instance, as many others have mentioned, Jecks tends to use the same phrases, words and sentence constructs repeatedly. The most noticeable (and annoying) of these was his constant use of the phrase “as if”(as in: “…it seemed as if the whole city was there…” or “it seemed as if the people of Paris know …” I’ll wager he’s used that term a thousand times through the book. This is no exaggeration – he used it 11 times in the first two pages! Sometimes, he uses it twice in a single sentence.

Jecks also doesn’t seem to understand the need to establish a consistent point of view. Although he normally uses the third person point of view (Simon), he lapses occasionally into the omniscient POV, letting us in on the thoughts of various characters. This would be fine, but you can’t be selective in that point of view – if we are to be privy to a character’s thoughts at all, we should have access to them always. You can’t, on one page, tell the reader what a certain character is thinking, then hide that characters’ thoughts from the readers at a more critical point of the story.

The book also suffers from the common “sit down and I’ll tell you the whole thing” ending, where all the motivation, etc., is summarized in a long (VERY long) explanation at the end.

Then, there is the problem of typos in the text (like “trail” for “trial.”) Not a major flaw (I’d hate to be judged on MY typos!) but another indication that the book was not thoroughly edited.

Finally (and the following may be considered a SPOILER, so be careful), I am not sure I can consider one of the main characters a “hero” after reading the ending and knowing what he did. I don’t care about the motives. Knowing this person was so cold blooded as to kill the way he did will make it difficult for me to accept him as one of the main protagonists in future novels.

I already have two more in the series in my library and I may very well read them someday. But unlike many of the other historical mysteries in my collection, I doubt if I’ll be in a big rush to get to them.

By the way, if you like historical mysteries in the Cadfael mold, give the books by Kate Sedley a try. They’re a bit hard to come by, but they are excellent and have one of the most likeable protagonists I’ve come across yet. They are among my favorite books in the genre.