Allison & Busby first paperback edition - 2022
This is now my tenth reading of the Bradcote and Catchpoll series by Sarah Hawkswood. I see that the eleventh is due out in hardback in mid May next year. I will be pre-ordering it with my next Scott Mariani and Susanna Gregory (The Thomas Chaloner series) - the three writers I am presently loyal to. Others - Sam Bourne, Raymond Khoury and Chris Kuzneski, I have given up on, whilst Michael Arnold seems to have stopped at No. 6 in his Stryker series and C.J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake takes several years to reappear.
Although the novel can quite easily be read as a 'standalone', one of its charms is that the main characters have developed as the stories have unfolded. This is particularly true with the flame-headed young Wakelin, Serjeant Catchpoll's under serjeant. His ongoing romance with Eluned, the Welsh kitchen girl in Worcester Castle, and his loving relationship with his mother is well done by the author. The homely sparring between Catchpoll and his wife (coming into her own more and more as a character in her own right) and the successful birth of the daughter to Lord Bradecote (his second wife not succumbing to childbirth as his first wife did) weaves genuine back stories into the main tale of yet another murder in the city. Above them all is the irascible Sheriff of Worcester, William de Beauchamp, on this occasioned wracked with a head cold and even more than usually irascible. The laguid castle Castellan, Simon Furnaux, disliked by Bradecote, Catchpoll and Wakelin, is also more 'onstage' in this tale.
What of the murder and the suspects? Godfrey Bowyer, poisoned in his own hall, was immensely unpopular with his fellow craftsmen for his argumentative ways. He may have been the best bow maker in Worcester but nobody was surprised by, or sorry about, his death. His wife was also struck down but survived a more limited poison intake.
Could it be Oderic the Bailiff, whose wife was subject to Godfrey's sleazy ways; or the widow, Blanche Bowyer; or the dead man's brother Herluin the Strengere, previous ejected from the house for fancying Blanche; were the maidservant Runild, or Alwin, Godfrey's journeyman bowyer, or Gode the cook bribed to poison their master? The list appears endless. The plot is skilfully constructed and, eventually unravelled. The author has a way with words and has immersed herself in the sights and sounds (and smells!) of the mid 12th century England, the period of The Anarchy.
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