August 2019 and August 2020
I have just finished the fourth novel in the Matthias Barton Mystery series. I must admit, I searched hard this time for a 'mystery'. Any 'red flags' about potential baddies are hoisted very early on and are so obvious that the flag can only be coloured pale orange. I wouldn't go so far as one anonymous reviewer on the back cover of Spare the Rod (I can't believe Rosie Lear allowed it) "A light historical read with some strong characters - a sort of Enid Blyton for adults." Ouch! There are also two worrying signs about the production of this fourth book: there are no page numbers and the offside margins are virtually non-existent. Did the publisher try to cut corners on a project they felt might not make a decent enough return? A really good proof reader would have picked up on the typos and tried to cut out the repetition of words and phrases too close to each other, e.g.: Travellers and traders came from miles around...hundreds of traders from miles around.
In Rosie Lear's usual Author's Notes at the end, she feels she has more to say: ...this will feature in the final book of the Sherborne Medieval mysteries.
Shaftesbury Abbey
Sherborne Abbey
Book Three in the series, A Tale of Two Abbeys, is a tighter story than the others. Characters from the previous books are further fleshed out - such as Ezekiel Jacobson, the barber surgeon - and there are good portrayals of the Lady Abbess of Shaftesbury and the naughty, very un-potential nun, novitiate Winifrith. Devil worship in Gillingham Forest (at last maps figure in the series) is the focus of the novel, but the 'devils' are guessed almost immediately. Rosie Lear's characters are either goodies or obvious baddies.
Although Sherborne features in this fourth novel, it is only briefly, as the Tale takes us along the south coast in pursuit of a dastardly band of smugglers of wool; amongst them is a nasty piece of work, Walter Woodman, who has not only previously murdered two people and is on the run, but has kidnapped Matthias' stepson, Luke. There is some psychology/character-drawing used in portraying the variety of emotions amongst the usual core of characters: Matthias, his new wife Lady Alice, Martin (the one-legged, one-eyed, ex-squire of Alice's previous husband), Ezekiel, the Christianised Jew and his wife, the Coroner Sir Tobias, and his wife, and so on. Once again, reference is made to the state of affairs under the young Henry VI, and we meet de la Pole, the Duke of Suffolk. It is a gentle story, notwithstanding the odd murder and fight, but the author is not a challenge to the more established (and highly lucrative) historical fiction marketeers - Susanna Gregory, Paul Doherty, Candace Robb and the ubiquitous Edward Marston.
Now it's a return to a Nineteenth-century Scottish author: John Galt again and Rothelan (1824)
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