The Mark of a Murderer

This eleventh book in the Matthew Bartholomew series is a fun read.

The tale opens in 1355 during a riot in Oxford that leaves sixty scholars and twice as many townspeople dead. The riot was instigated by a mysterious dark monk.

The devastating events in Oxford are the talk of the town in Cambridge. Everyone is aware of the problems in the other university town and they want to make sure that the same thing doesn't happen in their city.

After the riot, a number of Oxford scholars flee to Cambridge. Along with them go a small group of townsmen in the belief that the murderer of one of their colleagues may well be found in town that rival them for scholastic endeavour.

Brother Michael, Michaelhouse’s leading scholar and the university’s show more proctor, is furious that anyone else should try to search for the killer and is dismissive of the insistence of these upstarts that Cambridge is harbouring the murderer. He is also annoyed that that his friend Matthew Bartholomew, the Michaelhouse lecturer and physician, seems to be paying an inordinate amount of attention to Matthilde, the head of the local prostitutes’ guild – without any concern for public opinion. Michael has been eating even more than usual, and Matthew is worried about his health.

At the same time, there all the usual inhabitants of these tales are busy. Clippesby, a lecturer who believes animals talk to him, has taken a turn for the worse and appears to be manifesting frightening new symptoms of insanity. Then there is an old feud, plus an old friend now so altered by time and age that Matthew wonders if he was mistaken in his admiration as a youth.

It eventually becomes clear that the riot was not a case of random violence but part of a carefully orchestrated plot . . .

People keep turning up dead and Michael and Matthew are hard-pressed to sort it all out before a planned visitation from the Archbishop of Canterbury. The list of corpses and suspects reaches an almost ridiculous length. In fact, we could almost be in a medieval Midsommer Murders tale.

And that is why I like these books – they are well written, well cast and well researched. They fit like an old pair of shoes – or an episode of Midsommer Murders on a Sunday night. show less

Earlier in the year Oxford saw serious unrest between town people and the university, so with the Archbishop's visit approaching, authorities in Cambridge are on high alert for anything unusual. A string of unusual deaths follows, but Matthew and Michael seem to be stumbling from clue to clue without being able to see the pattern until the very end.