Reserved at library because it's in Molly Young's Read Like the Wind newsletter:
“A Morbid Taste for Bones,” by Ellis Peters |
The place: Shrewsbury Abbey. The time: late spring of the year 1137. The person: Brother Cadfael, a monk with a torrid past, a penchant for herb-gardening and a knack for solving crimes. |
This is the first book in a once wildly popular series that follows the adventures of a shrewd yet pious amateur sleuth. As plotlines go, the one driving this novel is almost comically boring in summary, so I’ll cover the basics quickly; you’ll just have to trust me on its spine-tingling potential: |
A chief administrative monk becomes upset that his abbey doesn’t have any cool relics or miracle-working saints that he can leverage to draw visitors. (The abbey lacks an “It factor,” you could say.) Soon the greedy monk discovers the existence of a neglected martyr in a faraway town and — thinking, “I can work with this” — sends a crew of flunkies to fetch the martyr’s body and claim it for their own. Brother Cadfael, having a bad feeling about the whole business, gets himself conscripted for the journey and thus finds himself on the scene when a dead body shows up! His holy mission, which he indeed chooses to accept, is to puzzle out whodunnit. |
Read if you like: Porridge, cozy (or “cosy”) mysteries, herbaria, the British television series “Prime Suspect” starring Helen Mirren, wholesome fun
Available from: Also currently free to borrow from the Internet Archive — and check bargain bins and libraries near you. (Or eBay.) |
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