Susanna Gregory is not as prolific a writer as many of the authors who write this style of book and the anticipation of waiting for a new title can be quite frustrating for the reader. However the wait is always worthwhile.
Her choice of Cambridge as the main backdrop to her books is inspired. It seems to lull the reader into a world of spires and colleges inhabited by the students and academics who teach there. There is also always the underground rumblings of the inhabitants of the city who are constantly at loggerheads with the colleges and hate the students intensely, thinking of them as nothing more than thugs and bully boys.
Now to a little background from the book, which of course to make a complete liar of me takes place in Lincoln.
It is a cold and blustery evening in the year of our Lord 1356, Matthew Bartholomew and Brother Michael have journeyed to Lincoln. The cathedral are to honour Brother Michael and Bartholomew is determined to look for and find the woman he loves and is determined to marry.
Both men soon find out that the religious lodgings in which they are staying is not the safe place it is depicted to be. It is revealed that a guest has already been murdered under mysterious circumstances. It emerges that when the victim was found he was holding a chalice, a well known relic of Lincoln and one that had a bloody past. Why? what significance does it have to the death of the man . . .
Matthew and Brother Michael are soon drawn into the web of murder and deceit, but they are far from home, this is not Oxford and neither man is sure who can be trusted and who cannot.
I have never hidden my admiration for Susanna Gregory's writing and this one is a joy to read.
