Paul Harding: The Assassin's Riddle (1996)

Edition: Headline, 1996
Review number: 670

There are two mysteries in this novel from Harding's medieval crime series, one a locked room puzzle, a genre which has already cropped up several times in the Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan, and the other a serial killer who leaves riddles with the bodies of the victims. The first puzzle is the death of rich banker Bartholemew Drayton, who is found killed by a crossbow bolt in his strongroom, locked on the inside. The pressure is on Sir John Cranston, Coroner of the City of London, and his friend, the friar Athelstan, to swiftly discover the killer, particularly are five thousand pounds of silver is missing, instead of enriching the regent, John of Gaunt. The other is the murder, one by one, of the clerks working in a particular office in Chancery (which ran much of the bureaucratic administration of medieval England). The riddles left on their bodies are not in fact too difficult to work out (though they use some dubious linguistic trickery which I suspect depends on aspects of the English language which are anachronistic), and neither is the identity of the killer. The locked room is a much harder puzzle.

Having two mysteries means that the novel has to concentrate on them, rather than on the background of late fourteenth century London. Mind you, most of the readers of The Assassin's Riddle will probably already have read earlier novels in the series, so this doesn't matter as much as it might do.

Paul Harding: Murder Most Holy (1992)

Edition: Headline, 1992
Review number: 185

One of the disadvantages to attempting to read a series of novels from a public library is that it is extremely difficult to read them in the correct order. This is why I have only just made it to reading the third of Paul Harding's "Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan", even though I have already read several later novels in the series.

Murder Most Holy is in fact three separate murder mysteries, which simultaneously test the abilities of the London coroner Sir John Cranston and his friend, the Dominican friar Athelstan. One is theoretical, a puzzle set Cranston by the Lord of Cremona, visiting London, as a bet; it is a locked room mystery. One involves a skeleton dug up during renovation at Athelstan's Southwark church, St Erconwalds, in danger of being thought to be the miracle-working remains of the saint himself. The main mystery is set at the friary of Blackfriars, where Athelstan himself had trained. There, a series of senior friars have been killed during the investigation into a thesis in theology presented by one of them which has to be defended against possible heresy charges.

The medieval background is as well done as ever, and the mysteries are interesting; an excellent member of the series.

Paul Harding: House of Crows (1995)

Edition: Headline, 1995
Review number: 92

Another of "the sorrowful mysteries of Brother Athelstan" by P.C. Doherty under one of his other names. The main characters remain the same as in the earlier books, Sir John Cranston, coroner of the city of London, and his friend, the friar Athelstan, doing their best to bring justice to the corrupt world of late fourteenth century England, under the boy king Richard II and the ruthless regent John of Gaunt.

In this novel, Gaunt has called Parliament in an attempt to raise more money through taxes - the principal limit to an English king's power throughout the middle ages was his inability to raise direct taxation without the consent of Parliament. The problem Cranston and Athelstan are given to sort out is that someone is killing off the MPs from the Shrewsbury area, who are opponents of Gaunt.

As usual in these books, the excellence of the medieval London background stands out; the squalor is strongly depicted, as well as the spirituality.