The excellent pseudonymal Susanna Gregory returns with her ninth installment of the Mathew Bartholomew chronicles and doesn't disappoint. From the prologue where the messenger Josse's accidental death turns out to be a boon for someone and the death of Norbert, laconic brother of the now retired Sheriff of Cambridge's, Richard Tulet, Gregory settles into her latest mystery with effortless ease, instantly creating a a tuly piscine tale with both plot and scene with that easy familiarity that is her hallmark.
We plunge into a humorous opening with Michael's ridiculous attempts to spy on a Cambridge newcomer, Harysone, based on personal dislike and demanding Matthew declare the man's insanity without actually meeting him before swiftly finding another corpse in Michaelhouse's church. The anticipation of the coming Christmas means that Michael is forced to choose which murder to investigate first and Bartholomew's life is complicated by the return of his once-betrothed - Phillipa Abigny.
Phillipa is drastically changed from the woman who left him to marry the fishmonger and Mayor of London-desiree, Turke and both she and her brother, Giles Abigny arrive to stay at Edith and Stanmore's house.
Murder and mayhem swiftly follow as Christmas sets in, Michaelhouse electing Deynham its twelve day Lord of Misrule. Unlike in Gregory's previous offering up at Ely, the murdered body count is low this time (though the eventaul tally is high after it turns out everyone was culpable to some degree and ends up dying to tie up all the loose ends). There is Norbert, the dead `beggar' in St Michael's is discovered to be Gosslinge, Turke's servant and Turke himself dies suspiciously after literally skating on thin ice. Gregory kills off the old rivermen from preceding novels, Aethelbad and Dunstan as the harsh winter takes its toll (there's more snow that Cambridge has ever seen since!) and we unravle more of the shadowly political dealings that weave through Cambridge.
Amongst it all runs the mysterious Dympna, a charitable organisation that ends up having a sideline, the Chepe Waits (comprising Frith, Makejoy, Jestyn and Dyna) a travelling band of thieving jugglers, the newly arrived and dislikeable Quenhyth, and Ovying hostel gets a thorough runout with its head, Ailred. All of which has both Matthew and Michael scratching their heads at all the clues but unable to make sense of the sequence of events. The key to it all, in a delightful piece of murder mystery irony, is the Fraternity of fishmen and the protagonists relationships to each other.
So, by the time Matthew ends up in a barn having a particularly nasty hayfork jabbed at him during his attempt to free both Michael and Kenyngham we have had a double denouement, the lengthy first answering most of the questions but not all, the second culminating in the fight and the final two culprits racing off with the charitable gold and falling into the icy river. At the end the body count is high (though most of them are a grim justice), Matthew's relationship with Phillipa is resolved (we get the hint somewhat to Mathilde's relief) and the twelve day debacle provides levity throughout.
Right now, there is no better historical murder writer out there. Gregory's style, prose, plot and descriptive writing makes fourteenth century Cambridge immensely plausible, he characters are well crafted and empathic and, above all, the reader is left craving more. A truly fishy tale has been created here and Gregory has done nothing to make her audience even want her to lay down her pen. An author at the height of her literary powers.