Recommended

After how ever many weeks of suffering my rambling history lessons or slightly rubbish prose, I thought it time that I recommended someone who can actually write a brilliant page-turner.

     Susanna Gregory writes a series of books (totalling sixteen published so far) about a physician called Matthew Bartholomew. It’s set in Cambridge in the middle of the fourteenth century. Bartholomew is a member of the University, and helps his friend Brother Michael to solve the murders of their fellow scholars. (After sixteen books spanning about ten years, I’m unsure how many people can be left alive in Cambridge to kill off, especially as the first book ushered in the Black Death as well). These books are complex and various plot strands are intertwined within each novel so that you’re left guessing until the last page as to what actually went on. The quantity of victims in each book is rivalled only by an episode of Midsomer Murders, and the variety of chilling ends include a death by snow drift. Classic. What I love most about these books though is their protagonist. He is cleverly written so that even after sixteen books (read at least three times each) I still couldn’t tell you what colour were his eyes. This may sound annoying, but in fact because of the lack of physical description the reader is intentionally left to create their own image in their mind. It’s not all plague and murder though, there is the odd humorous scene and character to lighten the mood. I always think that they would make a good television series. But no doubt if that did ever happen I would only complain that they had got something entirely wrong. After all the book is always better. These books have got me through train journeys (and delays) that might otherwise feel endless, and is my current salvation as dissertation deadline’s loom ever closer.

     And so now I shall leave you with a passage from The Tarnished Chalice, the twelfth chronicle in the series (picked simply because it is sitting beside me on my desk as I write this).

Then Bartholomew emerged, wondering what was taking the monk so long. He stopped short when he saw the monk cupping his hands over Christiana’s as they struggled with the flame together.

     ‘My colleague,’ said Michael, making no attempt to move his fingers from Christiana’s silky skin. ‘The one who sneaks off in the middle of conversations, leaving his friends talking to themselves.’

     Christiana inclined her head in response to Bartholomew’s bow. ‘And the one who likes to linger in mortuary chapels. Reading, apparently.’

     ‘Only if I have a lamp,’ said Bartholomew tartly, elbowing Michael out of the way so he could light it himself; the monk was taking far too long over the operation.