Paul Doherty: The Treason of the Ghosts (2000)

Edition: Headline, 2000
Review number: 806

The medieval town of Melford is a dangerous place for young women. A serial killer is stalking the lanes around the town, which has grown quickly from a village after local farming has changed to the profitable business of sheep rearing. When local magnate Sir Robert Champelys is hanged, found guilty of the killings, they stop. However, questions are raised after his conviction - the jury included several men he had cuckolded, and there seemed to be irregularities in some of the evidence. Sir Robert's son petitioned the king for an investigation and maybe a pardon, and when the killings start up again the king's clerk Sir Hugh Corbett is sent to Melford to find out the truth.

In many ways The Treason of the Ghosts is not quite typical of the series of novels in which Corbett is the detective. It is as meticulously researched as ever, but the fact that there is more plot than usual (with a large number of murders requiring simultaneous investigation) leaves less room for the evocation of background which is one of the principal merits of the series. Like many of Doherty's novels, particularly those written as Paul Harding, this one contains a locked room mystery, but it is only perfunctory and easily solved in a few pages. It is in fact quite easy to work out who the murderer is, with Corbett ignoring some very obvious leads. The poorer plot and lack of background make The Treason of the Ghosts one of the least successful novels in the series.

Paul Doherty: The Devil's Domain (1998)

Edition: Headline, 1998
Review number: 541

The Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan now join Paul Doherty's other successful historical novels in being published under that name rather than the Paul Harding pseudonym. Eighth in the series, The Devil's Domain is typical, with the background of 1390s London fearful because of the growing unrest that would eventually lead to the Peasant's Revolt. Though this background is constantly part of the novel (and, indeed, the series), the more immediate cause of the mystery to be investigated by John Cranston, Coroner of the City of London, and his friend brother Athelstan, is the ongoing wars with France (later lumped together by historians as the Hundred Years' War).

A group of French prisoners has been housed in Hawkmere Manor, now Cripplegate, during a truce while their ransoms are negotiated and paid. However, one of them dies mysteriously, poisoned in a locked room even though the prisoners have agreed only to eat food they have shared, fearing an attack of this kind.

The plot is ingenious (though fairly specialist knowledge would be needed to work it out ahead of brother Athelstan). The background is, as always in Doherty's medieval novels, detailed and convincing (and not as sanitised as that presented by, say, Ellis Peters). Whatever author's name they appear under, the series continues to be worth reading.

Paul Doherty: The Mask of Ra (1998)

Edition: Headline, 1999
Review number: 473

Many historical novelists have a period of history for which their writing seems particularly well suited. This is partly because writing a good historical novel involves a good deal of research, so that the background is most convincing when it matches a period of history the author is interested in, understands well, or has already done closely related research for previous novels. When an author moves to a different setting, the novels are often poorly executed. Paul Doherty has concentrated on medieval Europe, a setting which (because he had been a researcher in medieval English history before turning to fiction writing) he already knew well. Occasional works with other backgrounds - seventeenth century France, for example - were not as convincing.

Thus, my expectations for a Doherty novel set in the far more alien background of ancient Egypt were not high. However, The Mask of Ra turned out to be well worth reading, and I found this different background almost as convincing as that of Doherty's Hugh Corbett and Brother Athelstan series. Mind you, my knowledge of Egyptian culture is a little sketchy. I occasionally had the feeling that I was being lectured to a little to much, because Doherty expects his readers to find ancient Egypt very different from anything in their experience.

The major problem with this novel is that its main characters, Amerotke and his servant Shufoy, are too similar to Hugh Corbett and his servant in both their personalities and relationship to one another. This shows a lack of imagination on Doherty's part, which really should have been avoided, particularly considering that many of the readers of this novel will have read some of the other series.

Paul Doherty: The Demon Archer (1999)

Edition: Headline, 1999
Review number: 395

It is a pleasure to read this new Hugh Corbett novel. Paul Doherty, with a doctorate in medieval history, knows the early fourteenth century extremely well and, moreover, conveys the background convincingly and unobtrusively. Corbett is a good central character, and the mysteries he investigates usually interesting and complex enough to please any crime fiction aficionado.

This particular novel is set in Ashdown Forest, in Kent, then thickly wooded. ("Forest" in medieval English refers to land set aside for hunting, usually but not always covered with trees.) One of the foremost nobles of the kingdom, Henry Fitzalan Earl of Surrey is killed here by an assassin who has only made a minimal attempt to disguise the death as a hunting accident. Since he was about to lead an embassy to France to negotiate the treaty accompanying the marriage of Prince Edward (later Edward II) and Isabella daughter of Philip IV of France, his death could have important political consequences, but his private live could equally provide a motive for murdering him, as seduction was his chief hobby. In addition, he had just refused to pass on some of the family estate to his brother and heir to make him financially independent, a move not calculated to endear William to him.

P.C. Doherty: Ghostly Murders (1997)

Edition: Headline, 1997
Review number: 132



I rather like the idea behind this series of Doherty's, very different from the Hugh Corbett mysteries or the Brother Athelstan books he writes as Paul Harding. The characters are the pilgrims of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and the idea is that in the evenings, resting from the day's journey, each pilgrim in turn told a murder story to match the tales told during the day and recorded by Chaucer. The stories so far (I believe this is the fourth) all have much the same format, third person narratives which turn out to be thinly disguised autobiographical accounts interspersed with comments from the other pilgrims. Each individual story is much longer than the ones in the Canterbury Tales, and they connect together several of the pilgrims (so that the final number of books in the series will be fewer than twenty-four, the number of Chaucer's tales).

Ghostly Murders is the tale of the poor priest, and it brings in the cook and the ploughman. It is extremely unusual among modern historical novels dealing with the Middle Ages in that it includes supernatural events which do not admit of rational explanation - visions of ghostly horsemen, physical attacks by spectres. Naturally, just about everyone in the fourteenth century would believe in such phenomena, but it is almost a convention of historical writing to allow a get-out for the modern sceptic.

The plot also involves a theme to which just about all writers of novels depicting the fourteenth century - and indeed many others - eventually turn: the downfall of the Templars in 1308. The overnight destruction of the richest and most powerful order of fighting monks (so rich and powerful as to amount to virtually a separate state within Europe) by Philip IV of France, and the acquiescence in its destruction by the Pope and other monarchs including Edward II of England is an irresistibly romantic mystery, with questions such as how justified were the accusations made against them? How complete was the destruction? Why did they just fold up and let it happen to the? (An interesting novel to read if you want to know more about the bizarre theories devised to answer these questions is Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum; Lawrence Durrel's Avignon Quintet looks at the issue from a rather different angle.)

Clearly (and this is one of the few clear aspects of the event), the destruction of the Templars was less swift and less complete in England than in France. The premise of Doherty's novel is that a group of Templars were fleeing from their London headquarters with treasure, when they were lured into the Kentish marshes and killed from a distance with longbows. Over the next generation, the priests of the nearest village have a tendency to feel they are fighting the forces of evil, and to see spirits of both the knights and those who attacked them; then to become obsessed with the treasure and die raving. The novel deals with two men, brothers and priests, sent by the Bishop of Rochester to the village.

Ghostly Murders is an interesting ghost story, not particularly a mystery. Doherty manages his usual authentic feel, the characters not falling into anachronistic Freudian psychoanalysis as is only too common in this sort of novel. It is not written with the genius of Chaucer, so the various storytellers are rather similar to one another - strangely enough, their recitations fall into the same literary style - but it is entertaining.

P.C. Doherty: The Devil's Hunt (1996)

Edition: Headline, 1996
Review number: 80


This is the seventh Hugh Corbett mystery, part of the series set in England during the reign of Edward I. This particular novel is set in Oxford, where Corbett is sent by the king to investigate the serial murder of the masters of Sparrow Hall, a small foundation forming part of the University and the mysterious proclamations of "The Bellman", who calls down curses on the king in the name of his old enemy Simon de Montfort.

When Hugh arrives in a city full of memories of his own youth, he discovers that Sparrow Hall is involved in other suspicious activities: students from the hall are believed to be part of a satanic coven meeting outside the city and ritually murdering beggars.

In this rather unpleasant situation, Hugh sets to work. The king is unconcerned about the murders themselves, just about the activities of the Bellman. He fears that proclamations in the name of Simon de Montfort might spark a rebellion, even after many years of Edward's rule.

The book is typical of the series, which I like in general because it conveys a much more accurate reflection of the medieval period than many members of this genre - in particular, the Ellis Peters' Cadfael books, which present a heavily romanticised and modernised version of the twelfth century, with Cadfael a twentieth century detective in thought and word and deed. The level of violence is quite high, and the investigation proceeds slowly enough to allow several more murders to take place before Corbett knows what is going on. I prefer, as detective stories, the Brother Athelstan mysteries written by Doherty under the name of Peter Haining.

Paul Doherty: The Rose Demon (1997)

Edition: Headline, 1998
Review number: 271

It is rare to find a modern novel which takes medieval religious ideas and supernatural fears seriously. The Rose Demon is really a horror story set in a medieval world stalked by the demon-possessed, witches and the spirits of the dead.

The myth of the Rose Demon, or Rosifer, is (I think) Doherty's own addition to the complicated medieval system of demonology. Inspired by the knowledge that one day God would become incarnate in the human race, and enraptured by the beauty of Eve, the angel Rosifer tried to seduce her before the Fall, bringing her roses in the garden of Eden. Now one of Lucifer's chief servants, he is still looking for a human being to love him of there own free will. The closest he can come is to act as an incubus or succubus (demonic lovers usually associated with witchcraft) or through possession.

The novel itself concerns his relationship with Matthias Fitzosbert, the illegitimate child of a village priest, who as a child showed some affection to a hermit possessed by Rosifer. But as Matthias grows up, the demon's continued relationship with him causes all sorts of problems (such as accusations of witchcraft) and involves him in the great events of his time: the end of the Wars of the Roses, the imposture of Lambert Simnel, the Spanish conquest of Granada and the discovery of America. Everywhere he goes, the demonic presence nearby involves him with the supernatural: ghosts, Strigoi (vampires) and witches, all portrayed as they are in medieval chronicles. His realisation of what possession means - Rosifer always possesses those near him, not Matthias himself - as he grows older leads to a horror of those things which bring the demon near, despite his solicitude for Matthias.

Few writers take the supernatural seriously in historical novels; the best horror writers always do, from Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker to Stephen King. (Note that I did not say that they have to believe in it.) You cannot frighten with your tongue in your cheek, with the little concessions to twentieth century materialism made when neither writer nor reader takes these things seriously. The horror that can be evoked by ideas of demon possession (in believers) is worse even than the similar, twentieth century, horror of mental illness, because demons are known to be evil while an illness has to be seen as morally neutral. That is what Doherty is seeking to convey, and he really manages to do so.

P.C. Doherty: The Masked Man (1991)

Edition: Robert Hale, 1991
Review number: 65

Ever since Alexander Dumas wrote his classic novel, The Man in the Iron Mask, its subject has been one of the best known historical mysteries. Several of Doherty's early novels deal with such mysteries (the death of Alexander III of Scotland, for example), as did his Ph.D. thesis in medieval history (the murder of Edward II of England). In this case, he claims to have found new evidence to explain who the man actually was, and this is worked into the novel.

The story of the masked man is probably familiar enough. He was a prisoner in seventeenth century France, kept in a mask and forbidden to speak to (just about) any one, presumably so no one would know who he was. The mystery is basically to work out his identity, and why it was such a crucial secret.

The Masked Man is set about a century after the death of the prisoner. Ralph Croft is an English forger who has been sentenced to death in a French prison, only to be reprieved at the last moment. The relief brought by the reprieve is short-lived; Croft is visited by the Duke of Orleans, the regent of France and a man with a terrifying reputation. His pardon is conditional on an investigation into the story of the masked prisoner - whose identity even the French state no longer knows.

Croft joins two other men in his quest to find the truth. D'Estivet is a bullying, vicious man; Maurepas is quieter and more congenial (he also has a daughter of whom Croft becomes rather fond). One of them is seen fairly early on to be involved in a plot to overthrow the French government; Doherty brings in themes from a source I wouldn't expect a real historian to use, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

Perhaps this novel is one best viewed as coming before Doherty hit his stride; the Corbett and Athelstan novels are far better, and the medieval period is his main strength, whether he is writing as P.C. Doherty or Peter Haining.