The Tarnished Chalice

Susanna Gregory’s series of historical crime thrillers set in Middle Ages England and featuring Matthew Bartholomew as a physician and generally reluctant detective alongside Brother Michael, a more forthright investigator.

In this book, Michael and Matthew, along with others in a small party from Cambridge, are in Lincoln where Michael is to receive an honour at the great cathedral. As always, there are bodies and mysteries to be solved.

A singular aspect of these books is that, because there is little or no forensic science or established police procedure, the act of detection falls almost exclusively on interviewing suspects and witnesses and carefully correlating and assessing their responses. There is much more about what people show more say than about what people do.

This makes for a cerebral narrative requiring good concentration from the reader. Nothing much happens, although there is incident to be sure, leaving the reader hanging around waiting for some direction.

There is a strong sense of time and place and the historical accuracy is high. show less

I don't even know how to rate this, this is one in a mystery series that I enjoy moderately well, and will pick up a book when I see it at the library so I've read them all out of order and they've blended together in my head to become one long book. They take place in the Middle Ages, in Cambridge, where Middle Ages people get murdered in Middle Ages ways, and then monks and scholars investigate. More than once I have re-read a book in the series by accident and didn't realize it until half way through. It's the kind of series where there are always little things that are supposed to make the reader say "ahhh," like in this book when they talk about people suddenly engaging in mass hysteria and it's blamed on the devil, and you, The show more Modern Reader, can say "ahhh, that's ergotism."

I think this series might be getting too long, this is one of the later ones and I couldn't be bothered to keep up with all the characters and their possible motivations and possible opportunities.

Someone got murdered and it involved monks, that was my big take-away.

Yet, despite this, I would probably still pick up another one in the series if I happened to come across it. show less

Michael and Matthew are in busy Lincoln, where two groups of residents are locked in a destructive battle for dominance. While they are there, lots of people start dropping dead, and there's a mysterious business over a silver cup.