S. J. Parris

After being exiled to Paris, Giordano Bruno is recalled by Walsingham to help in an audacious endeavour. There is another plot against the life of Queen Elisabeth but Walsingham wants it to progress to allow Mary, Queen of Scots, to implicate herself and therefore be guilty of treason. Bruno is asked to infiltrate the plotters in the guise of a priest and also to investigate the death of Walsingham’s daughter’s friend.

This is another cracking tale from Parris. Her novels combine all that show more is best about historical fiction, a believable protagonist, a twisty and clever plot which is grounded in truth, a fantastic cast of characters with mercurial ideas and an amazing sense of time and place. Here the lives of women are brought to the fore, the frustrated noblewomen who are not allowed to do anything, the bright but poor and the woman who can do no more than be whores. Add this to a story which races along and you have a great read. show less

S. J. Parris’ seven-book series of 16th Century historical mysteries, built around the real-life figure of Giordano Bruno, an Italian philosopher, poet, alchemist, astronomer, cosmological theorist, and esotericist, has been recommended to me repeatedly, so I decided to sample the series by reading three novellas , written as prequels to the first book, starting when Giordano Bruno first entered the Dominican Order at the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples in 1566.

Originally show more published separately, the three novellas are now available in a single volume called ‘The Dead of Winter’. I think they work well together. Giordano Bruno developed over the course of the three novellas, and my picture of the world he lived in grew progressively darker.

I’m now keen to read the Giordano Bruno novels so I can see how he fares in the court of Elizabeth I.

THE SECRET DEAD

This was an enjoyable introduction to Giordano Bruno. He immediately felt real to me.

I was surprised that he was a Dominican, given their role as Inquisitors at this time, but S. J. Parris did a good job of showing it as a pragmatic choice for a young man with no fortune.

The story has a strong sense of place and time, depicting Naples as a violent, choleric city with too many people squeezing into too small a space, all of them living in the shadow of both of Versuvious and the occupying Spanish forces. It’s a rich city where life is cheep, everyone carries a knife and the gap between what people do and what Church and State demand of them is wide enough for a man easily to fall into it and lose himself.

The mystery was straightforward but well-told. The autopsy scene was graphic without being exploitative. Investigating the murder of the young woman also set Bruno on the path towards heresy, prompting him to put more trust in his own scientific investigations than in the brutally enforced dogma of the Church.

I liked how the mystery demonstrated the power structures in Naples and the pressures to conform that Bruno was under. The ending was credible and made me cheer.

THE ACADEMY OF SECRETS
This novella rounds out Bruno’s intellect and rebellious nature by entangling him with a secret society devoted to the understanding of Natural Magic (Science).

This story demonstrates that, although Bruno is an intellectual prodigy, he can put himself and others in danger because he has no patience with, or understanding of, politics, and is in the grip of a young man’s strong passions.

I admired how S. J. Parris evoked a world where the pursuit of forbidden knowledge could be fatal and where a person with no rank is at the mercy of the nobility.

In this story, the people were more important than the plot, but the plot still delivered some tension and excitement.

A CHRISTMAS REQIUM
This was the longest, darkest and best of the novellas. I was fascinated and appalled, but not surprised, by the Rome described in the novella.

I admired S. J. Parris’ skill in helping me see the Cardinals and the Pope as real people, with passions, ambitions and character flaws rather than pieces on a theocratic chessboard. Making them more human actually made them much more frightening.

In this story, the twenty-one-year-old Bruno discovers the hazards of being clever and flippant in the presence of men who can have you tortured and killed for the beliefs you hold and the books you’ve read. I liked that Bruno is both exceptionally bright and remarkably stupid. His naivety, arrogance and lack of impulse control got him into an astonishing amount of trouble in Rome in a very short time.

Part of what made this story so dark was knowing that the real Giordano Bruno was eventually killed by the Inquisition in Rome in 1600, thirty-one years after the events in this novella; he was burned at the stake in Rome in the Campo dei Fiori. S. J. Parris foreshadows this by having Bruno sneak out of the Dominican headquarters in Rome during a time of fasting. He finds something to eat at a café in the Campo de Fiori. He enjoys his meal up to the point where he spots a pole on the centre of the market used for the tormento della cordia, a torture devi show less

This book introduces the character of Giordano Bruno, an excommunicated Italian monk who ends up in Elizabethan England under the protection of the French King Henri II and is recruited by Francis Walsingham as a spy. Bruno travels to Oxford to participate in a debate on the structure of the Universe and in search of a secret book, but also to spy on recalcitrant Catholics in this strictly Protestant land. He is drawn into solving a series of brutal murders and uncovering a secret ring of show more Catholic sympathisers.

Parris draws us in with her fine depiction of Elizabethan life and very clearly describes the religious hysteria of the times. Bruno is a well-rounded character who displays sufficient strengths, weaknesses and internal conflicts to be utterly believable and for us to root for him as the story unfolds. Other characters are strongly drawn and we often find ourselves sympathising as we condemn.

This is excellent both as an historical picture and as a driven thriller. show less

Summary: Giordano Bruno is an ex-monk, excommunicated from the Catholic Church for his heretical views on the nature of the universe. After fleeing Italy one step ahead of the Inquisition, he spent years on the run throughout Europe, teaching and debating, before finding himself in England in 1583. He is set to visit Oxford to debate the rector of Lincoln College, but before he leaves, he is recruited by Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen's Intelligence master, to sniff out any Catholic show more conspirators who may be planning to overthrow the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I. However, Bruno barely has time to settle in at Oxford, let alone make any investigations, before the college fellows begin dying in a series of brutal murders. Everyone has seems to have a secret, and Bruno suspects that there is something deeper going on - and he's determined to find out what before the death toll can climb any higher.

Review: Heresy contained just about everything I could want from a historical thriller: an interesting mystery set in a relevant historical context, a fast pace that kept me turning pages even in my dissertation-induced attention-deprived state, and an ample number of red herrings with a satisfying but non-obvious resolution, all wrapped around a core of historical facts. Giordano Bruno was real, and he did visit Oxford in 1583 to debate Copernican theory with the rector of Lincoln college. Many of the other characters, the murders, and Bruno's role as a de facto detective are fictitious, but are well-integrated with what we know from the historical records.

I did have a few problems with the book, too, although they weren't enough to majorly affect my enjoyment. For starters, we're introduced to a lot of Oxford Fellows very quickly, and they're not all characterized well enough to be immediately distinguishable by name later on. The tone also got a little too modern at times, and while that probably helped keep the book a quick read, there were some anachronisms in dialogue and tone that I found a little distracting. There was also a fair amount of emphasis put on certain elements (such as Bruno's search for arcane occult texts) that didn't pan out to much. Overall, though, I had a lot of fun with this book; while I haven't read a huge number of historical thrillers to compare, I thought Heresy was a well-put-together example of the genre, and definitely worth my time. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Heresy was essentially everything I was hoping for but failed to get from The Name of the Rose. And, while I don't think that the two works are comparable in scope or intent, if (like me) your favorite parts of Eco's work were the murder mystery and the banned books and the skulking around a medieval monastery, you'll probably find Heresy as much fun as I did. Otherwise, I think fans of historical fiction who enjoy mysteries or are looking for a break from "royal scandals and intrigue" novels will enjoy this book as well. show less