The abbey rents donated land from a young widow whose only request rent in the form of a rose annually. When a young monk requests to be replaced by another, trouble starts. First, the rose bush is hacked & the young monk is found dead next to the bush. Second, the young widow vanishes without a trace. When another body turns up & then the rose bush is set on fire, Cadfael knows he has little time to resolve 2 murders. When the widow turns up alive, Cadfael suspects its all about the donated land. But will Cadfael discover the murderer before the young widow becomes the next victim? ( )

A little better than average, and I like Cadfael in general. The problems of agency for a woman with property in feudal england, plus love and the usual bad / trapped actors make for a fun story. ( )

This one had me guessing about "whodunit", and had several red herrings to deceive the reader. I liked it as well as most of this series entries, if not a tad more. ( )

a widow's gift to the abbey is threatedned and the paths of two cirminals cross

In 1745, the Wistar family sold land to the Reformed Church in Richland, Pennsylvania for a nominal sum and the payment of one red rose every year to the family in June, a practice the church continues to this day. (In the interests of disclosure, my uncle belonged to that church.) Mildred Jordan Bausher used that story when she wrote her famous novel, One red rose forever but changed names and places.

Ellis Peters uses that same idea in The rose rent but changes some important details. The rent of a single rose is for a house given to the Abbey at Shrewsbury by a young widow. But things go wrong on the third anniversary. The bush is trampled and almost destroyed, a body is found and the lady goes missing. Father Cadfael has his hands full with further murder of a man and a rose bush.

A map helped put the landscape of the story in perspective but the story was slow going and especially lagged in the middle of the book. Not Peters at her best, but, if you have read the other Cadfael Chronicles, you'll want to read this one as well. ( )