Michael Jecks: The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker (2000)

Edition: Headline, 2000
Review number: 1045

I found this novel from Jecks' Simon Puttock series more difficult to get into than most of them; it doesn't seem to flow quite so easily. The setting is rather different, being the city of Exeter rather than the wilds of medieval Dartmoor, and this may have something to do with it.

The novel is a Christmas mystery, revolving around one of the quainter customs of the time. In what may well have been a descendant of the Roman Saturnalia festival, it was the practice in many cathedrals to elect one of the boy choristers as a pseudo bishop for the day just after Christmas; this (the Feast of the Innocents) was traditionally a day of riotous and boisterous misbehaviour. In Exeter, this celebration also included a gift of gloves by the cathedral to nominees of the bishop (the real bishop), and Baldwin and his friend Simon Puttock are both to be honoured. However, when they (fairly reluctantly) arrive in Exeter they are asked to help in the investigations into a murder in the cathedral close, and begin to see connections with other recent killings in the town, including that of the glover commissioned to make the ornate bejewelled gloves for the presentation.

Perhaps I was just not really in the mood for this kind of mystery. I don't think that The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker is poorer than the rest of the series and I did at least become interested in the puzzle by the middle of the novel. One to try reading again in a couple of years.

Michael Jecks: Squire Throwleigh's Heir (1999)

Edition: Headline, 1999
Review number: 662

One of the poorest entries in Jecks' generally excellent series of medieval mysteries, Squire Throwleigh's Heir never really catches the attention. The problems start with the title, which while genuinely possible in the fourteenth century with the meaning it carries - landowner instead of apprentice knight - tends to suggest an eighteenth or nineteenth century setting (the usage, with the title followed by the surname, also suggests this). The introduction, the most interesting part of the novel, actually talks about this type of problem, as Jecks defends writing in modern English and points out that some of the words correspondents have objected to (such as "posse") are genuinely in period but have anachronistic connotations to the modern reader.

The murder in this novel is of a six year old boy, heir to the manor of Throwleigh, a few weeks after the death of his father. This event provokes an emotional reaction in both the sleuths of the series, as Simon Puttock lost his beloved son at about that age, and Baldwin Furnshill has just got married and is thinking of his own future family. However, the investigation comes over as rather mechanical, the emotional parts of the prose reading, unconvincingly, as though they have been tacked on later. (It is even sometimes difficult to work out which feelings are being attributed to which character.) Though the solution to the mystery makes sense, the way it is set up is very artificial, the number of people who have secret reasons for being near the scene of the crime assuming farcical proportions.

None of the non-series characters are particularly sympathetic, and the most interesting is so only because of his occupation. He is a man at arms, but an expert in all the different forms of medieval combat, a trainer who is rather like an Eastern martial arts teacher. Such men did exist and were much in demand as bodyguards, despite the modern picture of medieval fighting as a crude matter of strength alone. (The quarterstaff and longbow, both English specialities, were weapons demanding great skill.)

It seems strange that such an excellent series contains a novel as poor as this one, but that is partly because of raised expectations. By comparison to some of the other writers who have stepped into the historical crime novel market after the medieval mystery was popularised by Ellis Peters, Jecks is still one of the best, creating one of the strongest backgrounds of all of them.

Michael Jecks: Belladonna at Belstone (1999)

Edition: Headline, 1999
Review number: 637

In this series, Michael Jecks has certainly been keen to show readers some of the negative aspects of medieval institutions; we've had a leper hospital, now it's a convent where lax morality is accompanied by poverty. Not all monastic establishments were hugely rich, though that is the obvious impression to be gained from what has survived - the huge scale of ruins like St Augustine's Priory, Canterbury, Thetford Priory, Fountains and Rievaulx Abbeys make it obvious what the financial reasons were which prompted the Dissolution. The establishments which have left no trace were generally far more modest, particularly convents of nuns. (Rich benefactors tended to endow establishments of men, for women would be unable to perform masses for their souls.) Belstone, a fictional abbey in a real Devonshire setting, is a place like this, a collection of dilapidated buildings upon bleak moorland.

Belstone in fact has more immediately serious problems than its poverty. The prioress, noblewoman Lady Elizabeth, and treasurer Margherita are at loggerheads and Margherita is embezzling from the priory. There are rumours of lax moral behaviour - nuns wantonly sleeping with the men who work the priory's lands and even the priest who conducts their services - which have some basis in fact. (This kind of gossip often surrounded communities of nuns, as is clear from the stories in Boccaccio's Decameron.) Then one of the novices is killed, and Margherita writes a letter to the Bishop of Exeter accusing Lady Elizabeth of murder. This prompts an investigation involving the detective partners who are the central characters of Jecks' series, Baldwin Furnshill and Simon Puttock.

The combination of the various abuses going on in Belstone priory is perhaps a little unlikely, and Jecks is a good enough writer to add some background to motivate it. In fact, Belladonna at Belstone is a very competently constructed novel. With as truly a medieval background as the rest of the series, it keeps up the high standard.

Michael Jecks: The Leper's Return (1998)

Edition: Headline, 1998
Review number: 400

The treatment of lepers in the medieval period is something distasteful to a modern viewpoint, an example of extreme inhumanity driven by fear. It is a part of our history which makes the homophobia sparked by AIDS pale into insignificance (though parallels can be drawn); and it went on for hundreds of years. Such a terrible disease, not just incurable (at the time), but bringing horrific deformity, must have been (they thought) a punishment from God, a judgement for some terrible sin. It didn't take much imagination to make the assumption that lepers were monsters of depravity. This provided the excuse for persecution, as the supposed extreme infectiousness of the disease provided the excuse for making lepers into outcasts.

The official attitude of the church was slightly different, and it was thought to be a duty to provide some sort of shelter, in the form of leper hospitals. These were often pretty squalid, and little care and treatment could be provided. They also formed focal points for persecution, and massacres of lepers are recorded in times of misfortune, alongside persecution of Jews.

This is a sombre subject for a crime novel, and is reasonably well handled by Jecks. It is the attempts to relieve the mood with low comedy that are the biggest failures - a clumsy dog and its battle with a tyrannical maidservant. In the end, they (and the romantic subplot) spoil the novel. Of course, it is intended as a piece of entertainment, and it succeeds on this level, but it could have been much more without the soft edges.

Michael Jecks: The Abbot's Gibbet (1988)

Edition: Headline
Review number: 345

There is little to say about The Abbot's Gibbet, fifth in Jecks' series of medieval West Country mysteries, that could not also be said about most of its predecessors. A competent puzzle, in this case plotted with a useful device to avoid the trap of overuse of coincidence (a fair to bring together the protagonists, usually scattered across Western Europe), it has strong characters and an excellent background. I have not yet tired of the series, so for me it is not yet time to want Jecks to move on to something new.

Michael Jecks: The Last Templar (1995)

Edition: Headline, 1995
Review number: 303

After reading the three immediate sequels, it is nice to be able to get my hands on The Last Templar. Like many medieval historical novels, and other novels with an interest in the esoteric, The Last Templar deals with the suppression of the Templar order by Philip IV of France and Pope Clement. The motive of greed was hidden by sensational accusations of heresy and witchcraft against the order. (See the review of P.C. Doherty's Ghostly Murders for more about these events and their fascination for writers and readers.)

As introduction to the book, Jecks describes the dramatic scene at Notre Dame, when leading Templars are led out from torture to publicly confess to the awful crimes of which they have been accused. But they all denounced their accusers, claiming to be true sons of the church, until hurriedly returned to prison.

Then we move forward twenty years, to Simon Puttock's appointment as bailiff in the Dartmoor area. Almost immediately he is called to investigate a death in a tiny village on the edge of the moor. Although Puttock is inclined to dismiss it as an accident, the owner of the village, who is recently returned from living abroad, insists that it must have been murder. This man is Sir Baldwin Furshill, quickly befriended by Puttock. Other deaths follow, but Puttock cannot let himself be convinced that they are all connected, even after a group of the vicious outlaws known as trail bastons move into the area, beginning a reign of terror.

The Last Templar has the same virtues as the remainder of the series, having a meticulously researched and atmospherically presented background of medieval Devon. Since this is the first in the series, and thus the series characters need to be properly established, the characterisation is less perfunctory than in some of the later novels.

Michael Jecks: The Crediton Killings (1997)

Edition: Headline, 1997
Review number: 160

The fourth of Michael Jecks' medieval Devonshire mysteries has a sombre tone, particularly as it starts with one of the major series characters, Simon Puttock, and his wife mourning the death of their young son. Throughout the novel, the bulk of the detection falls on the other major character, Sir Baldwin Furnshill; Simon is much less able to maintain an equal partnership as he mourns - a realistic touch which really helps deepen his character. (The lack of a third dimension to the series characters has so far been a bit of a problem for Jecks.)

The mystery itself is straightforward enough. A troop of mercenaries, led by the false knight (false in that he pretends to have been knighted) Sir Hector de Gorsenne, are staying in the small town of Crediton on their way from Edward II's Scottish wars to the south coast and France. They take over an entire tavern, and one of the tavern wenches, obsessed by dreams of a rich husband, ignores the warnings of the owner of the tavern that mercenaries are dangerous. From the first moment she appears on the scene, it is obvious that she will be a murder victim. Her character doesn't work so well; surely no woman in a tavern in the fourteenth century could have been stupid enough to believe that a mercenary possessed the virtues of one of the knights of the Round Table?

So, for a change, the series characters are more convincing and the medieval background less so. Jecks has now shown that he can manage to write both well; all he has to do is succeed with both at the same time. (Mind you, Ellis Peters managed to be hugely successful with the Cadfael series, which managed to do neither as far as I was concerned.)

Michael Jecks: A Moorland Hanging (1996)

Edition: Headline, 1996
Review number: 109

A Moorland Hanging is the third of Jecks' Devonshire novels featuring Simon Puttock and Sir Baldwin Furnshil. Like P.C. Doherty, Simon Jecks is an author who really knows something about the medieval period. He is perhaps more interested in institutions than Doherty, and this combines with the country setting to naturally remove some of the unpleasantness of the medieval world (to a modern reader) which comes to the fore in Doherty's series of the seamier side of London life.

The novel has as its central theme the clash between forest law and common law which was an important part of the medieval English scene, where much of the land was designated "royal forest", to be the private hunting ground of the king and his friends. Although open land rather than woodland, Dartmoor was a forest, and this led to clashes between the tin miners who worked on the moor (who paid a special tax to the king, and were able to run their own affairs with their own courts in return) and local landowners. The miners were able to prevent the use of particular pieces of land for farming by marking them out as places where tin was mined; this privilege could be (and was) used to terrorise the landowners, who were unable to retaliate against the miners because they had the king's protection.

The particular dispute around which the plot turns concerns the escape of a villein, Peter Bruther, from the Beauscyr family demesne. By declaring himself a miner, he puts himself beyond the landowners' normal methods for forcing a serf to return and causes a confrontation between the Beauscyrs and the miners' leader, Thomas Smyth. When Bruther is discovered hanged on a tree on the moor, as though killed judicially, the confrontation threatens to escalate into a major incident; hence the involvement of Simon Puttock, the king's bailiff, and his friend Sir Baldwin Furnshill.

A Moorland Hanging is a fascinating novel, particularly in the way it makes the frequently obscure workings of the medieval legal system not only clear but interesting. The characters do tend rather to the two dimensional, especially those - paradoxically - that you would expect to be best fleshed out, the series characters Puttock and Furnshill.