Outlaws and Murderers

Way back when I first started really reading the Dame Frevisse medieval murder mysteries by Margaret Frazer, I managed to collect fifteen out of the seventeen with relative ease, the more recent ones still in print and most of the older ones available online for typical used-paperback prices of $1-$5 each.  But there were two spectacular exceptions: The Outlaw's Tale (#3) and The Murderer's Tale (#6).  Both are out of print, but for some unknown reason (small print runs?) are priced in the $30-$60 range on eBay and Amazon.  That's about 1000% more than I am interested in paying for a 250-page used paperback book.  So for a couple of years I kept checking to see if a cheap copy ever came up anywhere online.  No luck so far.  As I became more involved in the series and the spinoff Joliffe novels, it became more and more irritating to be missing those pieces of the continuity.  And last month it finally occurred to me that while waiting to turn up a copy that isn't overpriced, I could at least satisfy my curiosity by reading them.  My local library doesn't have either, but after a few weeks' delay, Interlibrary Loan came through for me.

The Outlaw's Tale starts out with a painful, please-tell-me-she-isn't-going-there Robin Hood ripoff: a band of outlaws actually nicknaming themselves after Robin Hood's band and interrupting Frevisse and a fellow nun's journey to a christening to invite them to dine merrily in the greenwood and so forth.  I was horrified.  But I really shouldn't have doubted Frazer (actually, at that point in the series, a two-author pseudonym for Mary Monica Pulver and Gail Frazer).  The leader of the outlaws is Frevisse's cousin Nicholas.  He wants a pardon for himself and his men and wants Frevisse to use her pull with her highly-placed uncle, Thomas Chaucer (the relationship is fictional but Chaucer himself was very real) to help him get it.  Staying with a business acquaintance of Nicholas' while putting the pardon in motion, Frevisse rapidly finds out that not only is that household full of interesting secrets, but that Nicholas is not quite as Robin Hood-like as he first appeared to be.  There's a murder, there's a romance, there's intrafamily drama, there are shocking deaths...and overall there's quite a good story here.  I was, happily, slow to figure out the murderer even when Frazer more or less dropped a clue on my head -- you have to be very sharp to pick up all the little hints she scatters through her stories.  And it's lovely to get even a little bit more of Chaucer, who was a wonderful character who, alas, dies on historical schedule in the next book (The Bishop's Tale).  Sometimes moving forward realistically through history can be a real drag.

One of the areas where the Frevisse books actually outdo the Cadfael ones is in avoiding a standard formula.  The Murderer's Tale, last of the collaborations before Frazer took the series solo, is an impressive departure: much of the tale is told from the perspective of the brutal and unpleasant Giles Knyvet, whose jealousy of his cousin Lionel is rapidly reaching the boiling point.  Lionel is epileptic, which is perceived by the society of the time as demonic possession, and Giles will inherit all his wealth should he die or be declared insane or incompetent.  Giles and Lionel and their entourage end up at the home of the noble Lord Lovell at the same time as Frevisse, who is making a pilgrimage in part as a respite from her annoying new Prioress.  Naturally, there's a murder -- these are murder mysteries, after all, and the early ones are pure examples of the genre -- though it takes some time to get to.  From the reader's outside perspective there's no secret about the identity of the killer; the intrigue comes from watching Frevisse put the pieces together and wondering whether the murderer will get away with it.  It reminds me somewhat of Thomas Harris' better novels.  It's also a lovely picture of life in a wealthy medieval nobleman's home, very different from Frevisse's impoverished priory or even the comfortable merchant's home of The Outlaw's Tale.

I recommend both books, as well as the whole series.  They each work as stand-alone stories, but I find the series a much richer experience when read in chronological order.  The full list is included in my previous post comparing the Frevisse and Cadfael novels. 

These two books:

Comments

[Serge]

Not much novel-reading for me these days. Being in the Bay Area for the Holidays, I went to Berkeley's Dark Carnival and got Walter Jon Williams's last "Praxis" novel, but I also got Mary Robinette Kowal's story collection "Shades of Milk and Honey". I couldn't see it on their shelves, so I asked the people working there, and they found it! What I am reading these days is "Beneath Ceaseless Skies", an online-only fantasy magazine the various issues of which had been piling up inside my Nook. The overall quality of its fiction puts the lie to rumors of the death of the Short Story.

[catx]

(actually, at that point in the series, a two-author pseudonym for Mary Monica Pulver and Gail Frazer).

That explains so much... the light has dawned...

[Susan de Guardiola]

#1-6 are the two-author team. After that it's just Gail Frazer.

I still like the books quite a bit, but I wish she'd stick to the mystery focus and not do quite so much politics.