This is the fourth in the author's series of murder mystery novels set in and around the Lincolnshire/South Yorkshire area in the early 13th century, at the time of civil war with barons supporting the boy king Henry III, son of King John, fighŧing French Prince Louis, who had been welcomed into the country as an alternative ruler at the height of John's unpopularity. Like the previous novel (and unlike the first two), this wider political drama did not impinge on the plot of this one, which centred around the murder of a monk in Roche Abbey. Our hero Edwin Weaver is once again dispatched by his master Earl William de Warenne to investigate the crime, on the strength of his earlier successes. As with some of the others, this was quite slow to get going, and the action heated up only in the last third, with the murder of another monk and exposure of the killer. This novel offered a nuanced and interesting depiction of life inside a Medieval monastery, which Edwin was at times tempted to join, due to his love of solitude and study, his wish to avoid being sent on further dangerous missions, and the seeming loss of Alys, the love of his young life whom he met during the siege of Lincoln. I really like Edwin, he is a man after my own introverted heart. At the end of the novel, the crime solved, he is reunited with Alys, whom he is soon to marry after a misunderstanding was cleared up, only to be told his lord requires his services again as another French army is to invade. This provides a good hook into the next novel, which I expect to read sooner than the two year gaps I have left between the previous couple of books in the series. ( )