First “Roger the Chapman” medieval mystery series set in 1470’s England. I’ve been waiting awhile to read this book and must say it’s worth the wait. It’s one of the best first-person POV books I’ve read in a long time. In this book, we meet a young Roger as he leaves the Abbey of Glastonbury, a former novice monk, now a traveling chapman or peddler. His first destination is the city of Bristol, where he meets the cook and housekeeper of a local Alderman who introduces him to his first mystery, a young man of the house who disappeared in London a few months ago. Well-written, with interesting historical detail and an episode in history that I also encountered in Sharon Kay Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour, but with a decidedly different twist. More! More! A+ ( )

This is the tale of Roger the Chapman, which means traveling salesman. A good candidate for a detective who meets many different sorts of folk in a time when most people never met anyone outside their own village. This book is set in the 1400s, England. The author attempts to give the historical and cultural setting for the characters and does a passable job. I say passable, because at times it seemed more as if I were being given a history lesson. I am not enough of a scholar to know whether all the facts were accurate or not. This book was readable, the writing style was fine, but I did not enjoy the first person narrative, that may just be my own preference. Also, the mystery was given away much too early. I'm sorry to say that I couldn't really engage or care about any of the characters. Still, if you enjoy historical mysteries, and don't mind sexual episodes and some (very little) crude language, you might enjoy this book. ( )

Protagonist: Roger the Chapman, a wandering peddler
Setting: 15th-century England
Series: #1

First Line: "In the year of our Lord 1522 I am an old man."

Told as the first of many stories by an old man, Death and the Chapman tells of the very first mystery Roger the Chapman stumbled into and how it whetted his appetite for more. In 1471, he had just left a monastery, bought the goods of a retiring chapman (peddler) and found himself walking into Bristol. Chance finds him in the home of Alderman Weaver, whose son disappeared outside the Crossed Hands Inn in London. Liking the look of young Roger, the alderman asks for his help in finding out what happened to his son if Roger should find himself in London. Several months later, Roger is in Canterbury and learns that two other men from that city also disappeared outside the very same London inn. Not liking the coincidence one bit, Roger decides to walk to London and see if he can figure all these disappearances out.

The whodunit was rather easy to figure out, but I enjoyed the character of Roger and the portrayal of the times so much that I'll be looking for others in this series. ( )