Erstwhile Remains

"There is a tide in the affair of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune."

- Brutus (William Shakespeare's Julias Ceasar, c. 1599) 

The title of Paul Doherty's eight Sir Hugh Corbett mystery, Song of a Dark Angel (1994), is the name locals of Hunstanton Bay have given to the cold, howling wind blowing across the Wash – a large, inland sea in the Norfolk countryside. Reputedly, the small, sleepy fishing village is the final resting place of many old, nearly forgotten secrets.

It's November, 1302, when King Edward I of England dispatches Sir Hugh Corbett, Keeper of the Secret Seal, and his loyal friend and companion, Ranulf-atte-Newgate, to this "dark, sombre place."

On a cliff top, a local woman was found swinging from the scaffold. On the beach below lay the remains of a decapitated man. The head was impaled on a spike and planted next to the corpse, but the sandy terrain surrounding both bodies showed no signs of disturbance – aside from those that could be attributed to the victims.

Regrettably, the impossible nature of both crimes remained tiny cogs in the machine of the plot, but, considering their simplistic explanations, that may've been for the best. You should be able to figure out how the hanging was done and make a good guess at the second one, but Song of a Dark Angel is definitely not a full-blown locked room mystery.

Song of a Dark Angel is better described as a grim, medieval village mystery with enough background noise to keep both Corbett and the reader continuously distracted from the first two murders.

First of all, there are the Pastereaux, a religious sect, who are preparing for the return of Jesus Christ and ship off the converted to Holy Land. Old grave sites are being desecrated and light signals have been witnessed along the coastline, but a far more imminent threat came from the villagers after another local girl, named Marina, was found raped and murdered on the moors – which gathered an angry, pitchfork-mob around an elderly lady and her son. The woman is known locally as a witch and even the ducking stool is pulled out for this portion of the story.

However, my favorite plot strand, woven through the others, involved King Edward's actual motives for sending Corbett to a desolate place for an apparently routine investigation. A reason that harked a century back into the past, which were the days of Edward's grandfather. King John of England is best known today in popular fiction as the arch-nemesis of Robin Hood, but in his day he was responsible for losing the French territories, probably murdered a rival claimant to the throne and caused a baronial revolt that led to Magna Carta – "The Great Charter of Liberties."

As the story goes, King John "spent most of his reign fighting his barons, moving around the country, trying to bring this earl or that lord into submission," but during a crossing of the Wash he lost something rather valuable. This lead to a fun, but deadly, treasure hunt a hundred years later. What I loved about this plot strand is how it really gave a deeper sense of time-and place to the story, because it's not just a story set in the early years of the 1300s. It was set in a place with a history. A place where the Vikings once landed and the Danes invaded, but it was as ancient history as the events from the days of King John and seemed as distant to them as 1915 does to us.

Overall, Song of a Dark Angel is a well-written historical novel and a fairly honest plotted detective story, which kept (for Doherty) a surprisingly balanced body count, but the setting was deserving of a grander story. I did enjoy most of the plot, but I have seen better from this series in only the handful of titles read thus far. However, that probably won't stop devotees of the series and historical (crime) fiction in general from enjoying Song of a Dark Angel.

The Sir Hugh Corbett Mysteries reviewed on this blog:

Song of a Dark Angel (1994)

The Devil's Hunt (1996)

The Demon Archer (1999)

Corpse Candle (2001)

Nightshade (2008)
The Mysterium (2010)

Tread Carefully

"And yet, who knows of Athelstan today..."

- Michael Woods (In Search of the Dark Ages). 

I'll return to the trail of obscurity in the near future, which, knowing myself, will probably be somewhere next month, because there's still a slew of contemporary detective stories vying on the slopes of Mt.-to-be-Read for attention – and February is hardly enough to cover them all. So that's the program for now.

The Nightingale Gallery (1991) is the first tale from "The Sorrowing Mysteries of Brother Athelstan," set in the 13th century during the reign of Richard II of England, published under the byline Paul Harding. Of course, "Paul Harding" is the now discarded penname of historian Paul Doherty, who already garnered praise under his own name with the Sir Hugh Corbett-series, but the Brother Athelstan stories has the potential to become one of my favorite series of historical mysteries.

Prelude of The Nightingale Gallery is the passing of the old king, Edward III, which leaves the throne to a mere child, Richard II, but the question is how the passing of kings affected a domestic tragedy at the home of an affluent gold merchant.

Sir Thomas Springall held a banquet on the night of his death, however, the poison that killed the merchant wasn't administrated during the feast, but in the claret of wine his servant Brampton brought him every night. Springhall was overheard arguing with Brampton and the latter was found swinging at the end of a rope in a garret. It's a neat and tidy case of murder/suicide, but Sir John Cranston, Coroner of London, has his own views on the deaths as does Brother Athelstan – a friar basically assigned to Sir John as part of his penance for his past sins. Nevertheless, there is a valid objection to their hypothesis of a double murder: the hallway to Springall's bedroom is named the Nightingale Gallery for the acoustic quality of the floorboards and they "sing" if you walk on them. It's a medieval burglar alarm, but one you can't temper with and they didn't sing on the night of the murder – except when Brampton brought Spingall's customary goblet of wine. Yes, it's another one of those pesky, locked room mysteries!

I first want to say I really enjoyed the main characters who were being introduced here and was particular interested in Sir John, who may've been modeled on John Gaunt from John Dickson Carr's The Bowstring Murders (1933) on the (bodily) scale of Dr. Gideon Fell. Someone who can withstand enormous amounts of alcohol without it effecting its thinking and there's one scene in which Sir John demonstrated he could listen attentively to a conversation, while apparently in an alcohol-induced coma. Brother Athelstan is an unusual character for Doherty, because, unlike Sir Hugh Corbett or Chief Judge Amerotke, there isn't a wife with children hovering in the background. There aren't loved ones here to treasure and protect. Just atone for the ones he allowed himself to lose.

The plot of The Nightingale Gallery also diverges from the later-period Doherty novels I have read in that it concentrates on the raffles of a single plot-thread, instead of multiple ones (e.g. Ancient Egypt-series), with clues, riddles and suspects abound! There's even a second poisoning in a locked room with an obscure potion.

Steve, a.k.a. "Puzzle Doctor," holding regular visiting hours at In Search of a Classic Mystery Novel, who probably introduced most of us to Paul Doherty, reviewed this book in 2011 and called it "one of the best mysteries that I've read for a while," adding "the impossible murder is very well done... there's enough here to work it out, but I bet you won't." Well, I solved the locked room angle and identity of the murderer without much difficulty, but I would put that down on having mostly read the later-period Doherty novels.

That withstanding, The Nightingale Gallery still stands as an excellently crafted mystery, which Doherty cloaked in the period setting of the story without attempting to romanticize history, which gives the story a great touch of the macabre when Doherty draws on his artistic license. For example, the part where Athelstan and Sir John meet Robert Burdon, a gate-tower constable, who, every morning, combs the hair of the rotting heads placed on spikes as a warning to other traitors and sings Lullaby's to them. You can understand the sequel, The House of the Red Slayer (1992), has ascended on my TBR pile.  

Tight Corners

"Are we never to get out of the valley of fear?"
-  Conan Doyle’s The Valley of Fear (1915)

It's September, 314 AD, when a fiendish ripper, known as the Nefandus, reemerges in the Caelian Quarter, "a rat warren of alleyways," after years of dormancy and vents his ire on the local prostitutes while tearing through the neighborhood. In another part of Rome, in far more august circles, Emperor Constantine and his mother, Empress Helena, are making plans for their empire, but not before smoothing out a few creases and turn to their trusted agentes in rebus, Claudia, for the job. 

Murder's Immortal Mask (2008) is a typical fair back in time, entailing practically all the elements, readers have come to expect from one of Paul Doherty's historical mysteries: like an uncaught murderer who crawled out of time's abyss and the recluse whose military past is the source of an all-consuming secret. 

Attius Enobarbus was a cohort of the fallen emperor Maxentius, snuffing out Christians and plundering their shrines during his reign, but times have changed and the only reason he's tolerated hinges on important knowledge he may possess – such as the secret location of the tomb of Peter the Galilean. But lately, Attius' wariness confined him to his chamber, which could double as a vault, however, secure and sealed rooms can be about as dangerous as a lonely track way – especially in Doherty's fancies. An assassin managed to slink in and out of the room unnoticed, stabbing Attius in the interim, but simplicity, if not to say banality, is the crux of the illusion here. I've noted before that Doherty's locked room tricks can be either simply clever or disappointingly simple, but the one he proposed here fits neither of those descriptions and felt like an inceptive idea that was left unexplored. I'm afraid this one was a bit too basic to meet my demands.

Fortunately, Murder's Immortal Mask did not depend solely on the deliverance of the locked-room angle to succeed as a historical novel of crime. That was just one facet of the plot.

The Nefandus' killing spree in the Caelian Quarter is somewhat reminiscent of Jack the Ripper's reign of terror over Whitechapel in London's East End of the late 1800s, and such persons, as Doherty remarked in his endnotes, must have existed in such places during that time. But what makes it interesting is how the Nefandus ties-in with the many twisted strands of this story, the dangerous, but colorful, backdrop it provides for Claudia and it's better clued than you'd expect – one clue a medical man gave on one of the Nefandus' victims was interesting to say the least. Well, it does give the reader a nudge in the right direction. 

On a whole, Murder's Immortal Mask is a fun blend of the ratiocinative detective and the serial killer story, set during a tumultive period of political and religious upheaval in Ancient Rome, in which Doherty plays his formula like a violin – and should please fans of his work and this series. But to be honest, while not unsuccessful as a mystery, it was kind of bland and I haven't enjoyed this series half as much as those that follow Sir Hugh Corbett and Judge Amerotke around, but than again, that's personal preference speaking.

 

And in case you missed it, I posted a notice of the two year anniversary of this blog a few days ago.

Night Shivers

"Do not allow evil into your heart, it will make a home there."

- Hercule Poirot (Death on the Nile, 1978, the movie adaptation)

It's January 1304 and the inhabitants of Mistleham, Essex, left a turbulent year behind them, in which their Lord Scrope massacred as heretics the members of small religious sect known as the Free Brethren, expounders of the doctrine of free love, and left their bodies hanging in the trees of the forest surrounding a deserted village where they camped out – meant as a dire warning to anyone planning to stir up trouble in Mistleham.

In the intervening time, King Edward I dispatches his dutiful emissaries, Sir Hugh Corbett, Keeper of the Secret Seal, and Ranulf-atte-Newgate, Clerk in the Chancery of the Green Wax, to Lord Scrope's district to restore order and retrieve a golden cross embedded with blood red rubies that he stole from the Templars and promised to the King. There's also the matter of a dagger that was looted from the King's vaults and is currently in possession of Lord Scrope. Corbett and Ranulf have their work cut out for them, but upon their arrival, they learn that a bowman has appeared, going by the moniker Sagittarius, blowing a hunting horn before plucking the string of his longbow felling one person after another in a murderous frenzy.   

This is the premise of Paul Dohert's Nightshade (2008), a historical mystery novel that’s covered with Doherty's fingerprints as he touched upon everything you come to expect from him in a Sir Hugh Corbett mystery, but like The Mysterium (2010), it's a good example of a story that works well within the formula of the series. Plus the ton of historical information and how fact and fiction are tied together usually makes them an interesting read whether the plot works as a detective story or not.

I'm not sure how relevant this observation will end up being to the review, but I found it interesting how Nightshade displayed nearly everything that I came to associate with Doherty's work. In The Demon Archer (1999), Corbett and Ranulf were send to the estate of the murdered Lord Henry Fitzalan, who was under siege from an avenging bowman known as the Owlman, and both Lord's had a sister in the church whom played an important role in both stories. Doherty also has penchant for constructing plots around war heroes who attempted to blotch out their past crimes, by and large committed on the battlefield, before a shadow from the past catches up with them. In this particular case, Corbett has to find out what happened during the fall of Acre, when Scrope stole the Sanguis Christi from the fallen Templars, before he can officially close the book on these murders. But I have to say, the characterization of the main villain here was a little less straightforward. He was obviously not a very nice man, but you get glimpses of another side of character, for example, his bravery and a restless conscience, presenting a character that choose to be evil in order to obtain his dreams – rather than just being it.  

Doherty is also known for his affinity for the locked room mystery, perhaps even being the most prolific mystery novelist on this side of the Atlantic who specializes in miracle problems, and while they aren't in the same league as John Dickson Carr, they can be quite clever – in a simple and straightforward matter. Nightshade has one of those clever, but simple, impossible situations.

As to be expected, Lord Scrope has to answer for his sins at the hands of his self-appointed executioner, but you can’t blame a man from trying escape the cold steel of an assassins blade or a swiftly loosened arrow, and the Lord of the Manor has erected a reclusorium on the Island of Swans – enclosed by thick vegetation and an icy cold moat surrounding it. Guards on the embankment keep an eye out for intruders and the reclusorium can be sealed from the inside.

 

Doors locked from the inside. Shutters fastened. And no way anybody could've reached the island. But somehow, someone managed to cross the freezing waters without a boat, phase through solid wars and bolted doors like a ghost and stick a knife in the heart of a warrior who didn't put up a fight – as well as leaving an untouched goblet poisoned with the titular nightshade. The solution is not bad and fairly hinted at, but not exceptional, however, it beats the one he offered in Corpse Candle (2001).

Overall, a fairly good yarn and Paul Doherty knows how to spin them!

Disturbing the Peace

"Of all the ghosts, the ghosts of our old loves are the worst."

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

If the Ghostbusters had been practicing their craft during the Dark Ages, they would've inevitably concluded that the abbey of St. Martin's-in-the-Marsh was situated in the middle of spook central. The region teems with tales of the ghost of Sir Geoffrey Mandeville, a feared robber baron in life, who prowls the Lincolnshire fens with a retinue of phantom horsemen after death – blasting their hunting horns with the ghost of their breath.

Naturally, the brothers of the monastery do not concern themselves with phantom horsemen from Hell, ghostly lights that foreshadows death and other superstitions that plague the locals. After all, they've more pressing matters on their hands: like exhuming and tearing down the burial mound in the Bloody Meadows that is said to contain the remains of an ancient king named Sigbert, who was martyred when he refused to renounce his faith. The plan is to erect a lavish guesthouse on the spot to attract pilgrims, but Abbot Stephen, who also happened to be a celebrated exorcist, considers the mound inviolable and refuses to give permission for its destruction. A decision that may have cost him his life!

One day, Abbot Stephen is stabbed to death in his private chamber, with the door and windows locked and secured from the inside, and King Edward I, who counted the abbot among his few friends, sends Sir Hugh Corbett and Ranulf-atta-Newgate to exorcise this demonic killer from the monastery.

Paul Doherty's Corpse Candle (2001) is much more a crime than a detective novel and characterization is more a focal point here than the actual plot. The revelation of the solution comes as Corbett and Ranulf slowly, but surely, undrape the abbot's past and even though you can anticipate snippets of the solution – it’s impossible to get the complete picture before Corbett does. It's not a bad plot, not bad at all, but it simply does not qualify as a detective story and the impossible situation was unnecessarily disappointing. I understand it was done to exclude any of the unsavory elements from outside the abbey, but by that same logic, shouldn't that also exclude anyone from the inside? So, either a trick was used to lock the door and/or windows from the outside, which can be done from either side of the grounds, or they didn't. I think this part of the story would've made more sense and been less of a disappointment if the door of Abbot Stephen's chamber had been ajar.

That being said, I enjoyed the story. It wasn't Doherty’s finest effort, but I enjoyed it. Doherty has a knack for poking and stirring a dormant era from its slumber and I begin to become interested in the relationship between Corbett, Ranulf and Edward I – and the effect the latter has on the friendship of the former two. Edward I seem to like the role of "the man behind the curtain" in these books and I want to see how it develops. There's also plenty of action, when Ranulf goes up against a local band of wolfheads. In short, what's not to like here if you're already a fan of the series? 

Is it me or are my Doherty reviews getting very summary? 

A list of all the Paul Doherty novels reviewed on this blog:

The Devil's Hunt (1996)
The Mask of Ra (1998) - co-reviewed with Patrick
The Demon Archer (1999)
The Horus Killings (1999)
The Anubis Slayings (2000) 
The Slayers of Seth (2001)

Corpse Candle (2001) 
The Plague Lord (2002)
The Assassins of Isis (2004)

The Queen of the Night (2006) 

The Poisoner of Ptah (2007)

The Spies of Sobeck (2008)

The Mysterium (2010)

Here's to the Night

"Those who plot the destruction of others often fall themselves."

- Phaedrus.

I once read either an article or a review, which floated somewhere on the web, concerning historical mysteries and it mentioned in passing that ancient Rome, as a backdrop for these tales, has become one of the most well-trodden periods in history and that made a lot of sense – remembering their penchant for cloak-and-dagger politics and poisonous intrigues. 

Take Emperor Nero, the John Rhode of the Ancient World, who ordered the construction of a particular ingenious death trap, a collapsible boat, to kill his mother Agrippina. After having failed to take his mother out, Nero simply dispatches a band of assassins and according to one of the stories, Agrippina ordered the mercenaries to bury a dagger in her womb. The stories practically write themselves!

Paul Doherty's The Queen of the Night (2006) takes place in August, 314 AD, when Emperor Constantine and his mother, Empress Helena, took the western Roman empire from Emperor Maxentius and plan to snatch away the eastern territories from Emperor Licinius, but first they have to quench the flames of unrest that are licking at the homes of Rome’s powerful elite.

One part has to look on, helplessly, as their children are whisked away and held to ransom, while veterans of a small band of Constantine's army, lauded for trapping and cutting down a group of Picts, are brutally murdered and mutilated, one after another, according to the practices of their old enemies. Empress Helena puts Claudia, a secret agent, on the case, scouring for clues like a mouse scurrying for bits of food, but a third problem, much closer to home, also demands her attention. Her uncle Polybius disinterred the corpse of a perfectly preserved girl from his garden and it's assumed to be the remains of a Christian martyr.

More than enough twisted threads for a good yarn, however, The Queen of the Night, plot-wise, turned out to be one of the least challenging and unoriginal historical mysteries I have read from Doherty.

The perfectly preserved remains of the young woman hardly poses a challenge for any modern reader, especially ones specialized in detective stories, and eventually peters out. Just as easy is figuring out who masterminded the kidnapping and the only interesting part was how the strand of the army killings intertwined with the kidnappings. I really got the idea that Doherty half-assed the plot here, taking bits and pieces from his other novels, and resettled them in Imperial Rome – like the murdered veterans from The Slayers of Seth (2001).

The Queen of the Night is as readable as any of Doherty's other, and more successful, efforts, but the plot shows that he either had an off-day or feels more at home in the castle strewn landscapes of mediaeval England or the sun blasted deserts of ancient Egypt. For completists only.  

I think that this was one of shortest reviews I have ever done.

A list of all the Paul Doherty novels reviewed on this blog:

The Devil's Hunt (1996)
The Mask of Ra (1998) - co-reviewed with Patrick
The Demon Archer (1999)
The Horus Killings (1999)
The Anubis Slayings (2000) 
The Slayers of Seth (2001) 
The Plague Lord (2002)
The Assassins of Isis (2004)

The Queen of the Night (2006) 

The Poisoner of Ptah (2007)

The Spies of Sobeck (2008)

The Mysterium (2010)

Death's Debt Collector

"Revenge is like a poison. It can take you over, and before you know it, it can turn you into something ugly."

- Aunt May (Spider-Man 3, 2007).

During the wintry days of early 1304 a professional and hooded assassin, known as the Mysterium, re-emerges after pulling a disappearance act from a locked and closely guarded church twenty years earlier, where this figure sought sanctuary after being unmasked, to settle old debts with a cut-throat interest rate. It's one of the many problems that keep Sir Hugh Corbett, Keeper of the Secret Seal and eyes and ears of King Edward I, and his right-hand Ranulf busy for the better part of Paul Doherty's The Mysterium (2010). 

Walter Evesham is the ex-Chief Justice who fingered Boniface Ippegrave, a clerk attached to the Office of the Privy Seal, as the Mysterium and capitalizes on this success, but when this story opens he's facing corruption charges and fled to the same church as Boniface to atone for his sins. Or so he said. It's also the same church where Boniface's sister, Adelicia, and Brother Cuthbert, a man Evesham spiritually ruined, live and the inevitable eventually happens: the loathed Evesham is found dead in his cell. His throat is cut and the door was barred from the inside as well as the outside with wooden beams and a wafer-thin slit for a window high in the wall. The chamber was, for all intent and purposes, an impenetrable prison cell. 

The solution as to how the murderer managed to bar the door on the inside of the cell was, as to be expected from Doherty, uncomplicatedly simple and absolutely workable, which may disappoint some readers, but you have to give the author props for finding a good motivation to turn Evesham's murder into one of those locked-door problems. I can be satisfied with a simple trick to turn a crime-scene into a sealed room, but I want some of the authors ingenuity that was lost on the impossible element of the story invested somewhere else in the plot (e.g. Anthony Boucher's The Case of the Solid Key, 1941 and Manly Wellman's Find My Killer, 1947) and that was definitely the case here. The explanation how the accused, Ippegrave, gave his guards the slip was one that, alas, traversed over trodden ground, but, again, not entirely without interest.

More murders are committed, all of them connected to Evesham, like his former clerk Engleat, who was lashed to the decaying remains of a condemned river pirate and cast into the inky abyss of the Thames, an old punishment for perjurers, and they all had the letter "M" incised into their foreheads – the signature of the Mysterium. It means Mysterium rei (The Mystery of the Thing). But even this barely describes half of the intrigue of this book, which seems richer and more fertile in both plot and writing than any of his other novels I have read and reviewed on here. As a matter of fact, I don't think I have ever seen Doherty being this generous with clues!

I might have over praised another book, but The Mysterium is the kind of detective story I enjoy the most, with its locked rooms, impossible disappearances, ciphers, clues and an actual plot to dissect. Is it perfect? Of course not. But it was written in the same spirit as the best historical mysteries by John Dickson Carr, Robert van Gulik and Bertus Aafjes.

All the books I have reviewed by Paul Doherty:

The Devil's Hunt (1996)
The Mask of Ra (1998) - co-reviewed with Patrick
The Demon Archer (1999)
The Horus Killings (1999)
The Anubis Slayings (2000) 
The Slayers of Seth (2001) 
The Plague Lord (2002)
The Assassins of Isis (2004) 

The Poisoner of Ptah (2007)

The Spies of Sobeck (2008) 

The Mysterium (2010)

Insurrection

"A little rebellion now and then is a good thing."

- Thomas Jefferson

When it comes to finishing series, particular favorites of mine, I have an embarrassing track record of postponing the inevitable end and allow a final installment of a series to linger for months before, literarily, closing the book on them – which is why I still haven't read the final volume of Hikaru no Go almost a year after its release. I'm not quite sure why I hold of these endings, but the same was happening with Paul Doherty's The Spies of Sobeck (2008). The seventh entry in the Judge Amerotke series.

The series has been as dormant as the sun baked Sphinx of Giza, shrouding itself in uncertainties as to its status, until Paul Doherty announced last December the return of Amerotke, Chief Judge of the Hall of Two Truths, which is why you read this review now instead of somewhere towards the end of this/beginning of the next year. Yes. Nearly six months have been plucked from the calendar since the announcement, but believe me, it's a pretty swift return considering how slow I usually am with picking up series after abandoning them. This will probably lead to a handful of non-mystery related posts in the future, because I really need to return to the Artemis Fowl books and the epic Journey to the West one of these days.

Anyway, on to the review of a book I was a bit skeptical of after reading a review that seemed to have betrayed a rather unimaginative solution to the central (locked room) problem of the book. I basically decided to read it so I could take it off my list and have a complete set of reviews for when the new book comes out, but found a surprisingly good and clever detective story in an underhanded sort of way. But more on that when we come to the problem of the sealed mansion.

Upon her return from victories in the North, Egypt's Pharaoh-Queen Hatusu (Doherty's pet name for Hatshepsut) is confronted with a Nubian uprising in the South as rebellion begins to bubble beneath the surface of her sultry kingdom when a Nubian sect of killers, known as the Arites, begin to wage a very personal war against their Egyptian rulers – and even series characters aren't safe from the strangling clutch of their blood red cloths. Imperial messengers and members of the Medjay, Egyptian soldiers, vanish without a trace around the Oasis of Sinjar and one of the regulars is brutally murdered alongside with the members of his household and servants – and a similar attempt at the home of Amerotke was thwarted in bloody confrontation. And with bloody, I mean really, really bloody. Serial-strangulations, impalements, throat-cuttings, etc. After a while, I stopped counting the bodies because there were simply too many of them. Doherty is not a cozy writer!

Hatshepsut: a woman of stone resolve

But it's the Mansion of Silence, the garden retreat of Imothep, formerly chief scout of the titular spies, which provides a puzzle for this story. At the end of the day, Imothep locks himself up in the mansion and intone his prayers to a dying sun. The house is bolted from in the in-as well as the outside and the windows are barred and several feet up. Even outside shadows could not penetrate the fortified retreat, however, when the doors are busted open they find the former chief with a red strip of cloth tightly knotted around his throat. A valuable statue that once belonged to the murderous sect is missing.

I have to commend Doherty for convincing me in the end that the solution for the locked room trick is not a cheat but actually quite clever. It's one of those things that only works (and is acceptable) in a historical setting and isn't that sort of what you expect from a writer of historical flights-of-fancies? Granted, it's not one of the best of its kind, but I do appreciate the effort that was clearly put into it and the attempts made at misdirecting the reader. The clueing was still sparse but more than in some of his previous books I read. And when Doherty drops a clue, he drops a good one. In this case, the decomposed remains of a man, whose hands were cut-off, discovered in Imothep's garden a few days before his own murder. Like I said before, if you enjoy mysteries that read like the diary of a cat or includes the sleuth's knitting patterns at the end of the book than Doherty is perhaps not for you. His characters walk those mean streets of history!

The rest of the story is an exciting historical thriller, in which Judge Amerotke (and others) dodge assassins, descend into the underworld of Thebes and break the back of the Nubian revolt. It's a fast-paced, entertaining read and the fact that Doherty can write not only helps with telling a page-turning story, but also with incorporating his knowledge of history without disturbing the flow of the story. I only wish Doherty would do more with the clueing/fair play aspect when writing these stories.

I have now read all of the Judge Amerotke novels, seven in total, but instead of giving the bibliography chronologically, I will post them in order of strongest to weakest:

The Anubis Slayings (2000) [****]

The Horus Killings (1999) [****]

The Poisoner of Ptah (2007) [***]

The Spies of Sobeck (2008) [***]

The Slayers of Seth (2001) [***]

The Mask of Ra (1998) – a co-review with Patrick [***]

The Assassins of Isis (2004) [*]

The Dark Forest

"An arrow may fly through the air and leave no trace; but an ill thought leaves a trail like a serpent."

- Charles Mackay. 

When I first accompanied Sir Hugh Corbett and Ranulf-atta-Newgate on one of their royal assignments, chronicled in The Devil's Hunt (1996), they were ordered to go down to the university town of Oxford, where death was haunting the college hallways like an elusive ghost and an ungraspable presence, known as the Bellman, slithered through the streets after dark to post treacherous letters on church doors, in order to restore equilibrium and dispense King's justice – in which they succeeded but at a price! An arrow plugged Corbett, but it was uncertain if the wound would prove itself to be fatal one and readers found themselves dangling on that cliffhanger for nearly three full years. I recommend going over my review of that novel before reading this one. 

The Demon Archer (1999) picks up the threads, which spins the yarn of Sir Hugh Corbett's career, and we learn that the King's favored clerk was able to disentangle himself from the cold, protrusive embrace of the fray-cloaked specter of death, with only a scar to remind him of their short-lived fling, and once again able to serve the crown that rests on the brow of Edward I. 

When Corbett and Ranulf report back for duty, they are dispatched post-haste to the estate of the murdered Lord Henry Fitzalan, who was felled by an assassin's arrow during a hunting party in Ashdown Forest, and his death may have political ramifications – since Philip IV of France had handpicked him to lead an English envoy into his kingdom. A suspicious honor, to say the least, and Edward I wants Corbett to find out as much as possible, under the cover of a murder investigation, but the assassination of the detested nobleman might have a germ that shot it roots a lot closer to home. 

Lord Henry Fitzalan was a man who consorted with harlots and witches and his lecherous tendencies made him the scourge of the local women, but also within his own domestic circle he was resented. He kept his younger brother, Sir William, on a short leash and lived with his half-sister, Lady Madeleine, the stringent mother superior of St. Hawisia's priory, in a permanent state of armed truce and the forests encompassing his estate seemed to be teeming with natural enemies – one of them an outlaw who refers to himself as the Owlman.

I remember reading a comment once, from a reviewer, stating that Paul Doherty seemed more comfortable when he was operating within borders of medieval England and the intricate web of deception, intrigue and hidden motives he wove between the estate of the slain nobleman and the court of Philip IV seems to support that statement – as he effortlessly manipulated every strand in this vast mesh of plot threads without loosing grip on even a single one of them. This is not a feat that is achieved in even the best stories from the Ancient Egyptian series, but here it's pulled off to near perfection and this is reflected in the quality and construction of an excellent plot – even though the main clues were ambiguous and the story lacked the lure of an impossible situation. The narration was also more lucid with a body count that failed to run itself up into the double digits. Yes, that's right, your eyes can wander from one chapter to another without stumbling over, at least, two or three bodies along the way!

It's obvious that Paul Doherty is in control of this story, but the same can't be said about Corbett and Ranulf. The former has a hard time getting a firm grasp on a solution for the problems facing him and is even treated to a rhapsody of whizzing arrows, while Cupid empties his quiver with amazing aim and accuracy on the latter – who promptly falls in love when his eyes comes to rest on the beautiful daughter of one of the suspects.

Corbett eventually succeeds to pull away the cowl, which shrouded the face of his adversary who lurked in the shrubberies and loosened a barrage of arrows that claimed four victims, after he finally managed to put a name to the first victim of this demonic archer – a woman whose naked and decaying corpse was left on the doorstep of the priory. But the political angle, centering on the British envoy and the Treaty of Paris, was wrapped up with as much satisfaction as the murders in Ashdown Forest and fitted seamlessly with the actual historical facts and evidence of what was going on at the time.

The Demon Archer is another fascinating and lively sketch of a time when court intrigue dictated the political agenda of Europe, which Doherty perfectly captured and re-imagined as a modern detective story, mingling historical facts and faces with fictitious crimes and characters, and it works!

Please note that I am really tired when this was written (been busy) and this may or may not have translated itself into a sub par review (can't even tell that at the moment), but rest assured, I will be back on the old track for the next one! 

The Potency of Poison

"...you and I both know that every time we investigate a sudden mysterious death, or walk through the streets of the Necropolis, Death, like a shadow, lurks not far behind."

- Chief Judge Amerotke (The Poisoner of Ptah, 2007)

The internal structure of the plot of The Poisoner of Ptah (2007), the fifth entry in Paul Doherty's Judge Amerotke series, is as clever as it simple, in which Pharaoh-Queen Hatusu, the first female monarch whose head was adorned with the Double Crown of Egypt, has to look on as her sultry kingdom is turned into a multi-layered chess board – on which she has to craftily maneuver her pieces around in order to ensnarl her Libyan adversaries.

But there's one piece on the board moving independently from the Egyptians and Libyans, a wraithlike presence referred to as The Rekhet, who becomes a third King in the game and both competitors are determined to wipe him from their playing field. The Rekhet was once a knowledgeable priest at the Temple of Ptah, where he was one of the medical clerics who dispensed potions and powders to the ailing citizenry and pilgrims, but when an alarming number of them prematurely shed their mortal coil he finds himself faced with a charge of poisoning – and threw himself at the Pharaohs mercy to save his neck.   

In exchange for his confession, The Rekhet was exiled to an oasis prison, which, in spite of its misleading designation, is not a celestial patch of lushly green and maroon blue, situated in the middle of a blazing hell, where embarrassing subjects of the empire are comfortably tucked away. It's a guarded hellhole, where you are ensconced for the rest of your life under the tormenting countenance of the radiating tyrant in the sky, but this infernal region, functioning effectively as a prison cell, gives the poisoner an unquenchable thirst for freedom – which he will eventually gain and not long after effecting his escape the city of Thebes is once again plunged into a poisonous plague.

During the signing of a treaty at the Temple of Ptah, between the nations of Egypt and Libya, three leading scribes, who drew up the terms of the covenant, also drew their last breaths on the temple forecourt – poisoned in front of a captivated crowd under what appears to be impossible circumstances! The scribes had observed the sacred rites by fasting a day before the ceremonial signing of the document and during the ceremony they had drank from the same bowl as the Libyan envoy who suffered no ill-effects from the sacred wine. Hatusu immediately grasps the severity of the situations and that mere pawns or bishops are not going to get this job done, and begins moving her dark knight: Lord Amerotke, Chief Judge of the Hall of Two Truths.

As to be expected, the Chief Judge of Thebes is confronted with a spate of violent deaths, as the narrative of his literary father slinks through the city like the bubonic plague, extinguishing life lights in nearly every chapter, enmeshing the judge in a tangle of knotted plot threads. A wealthy merchant and his wife are drowned under inexplicable circumstances in their pool, located in a garden guarded and surrounded by an unscalable wall, while back at the temple the remains of a foully poisoned temple girl, tightly clutching a dying clue, is uncovered – and these are only the deaths that have a direct bearing on the case at hand.

The body count of any Paul Doherty novel usually resembles the number of "guests" who checked into a big city morgue over the course of a busy day and his entire oeuvre could easily fill-up a second Catacombes de Paris, but in this story the soaring body count interestingly reflects the attitude of this ancient civilization towards violent deaths. In the first chapter, the signing of the treaty between Egypt and Libya is preceded with the ceremonial execution of a troupe of sand dwellers, murderers and thieves, who are brutally clobbered to death by Hatusu as sacrifice to her righteous anger and as a warning to her many enemies. This is greeted with downright hero worship from the onlookers, but when a few minutes later, on that same forecourt, three scribes clutch their stomachs and keel over everyone is outraged over this disgrace and insult to the throne of Egypt.

But with the cloaked, spectral figure of the Grim Reaper stalking the footsteps of nearly every character in the book and the wealth of historical details makes for a captivating read, which not only demands your full attention but simply taking possession of it, making up for some of its flaws as a detective story. The clueing is once again sparse and not every plot thread is tied up with equal satisfaction, such as the impossibilities surrounding the drowned merchant and the dying message left by the dead temple girl, but I liked the simplistic idea behind the impossible poisoning of the three scribes – even though that solution also has its problems. The Rekhet storyline was also adequately resolved.

The only real letdown was that none of these later books, from this particular series, seem to be able to measure up against The Horus Killings (1999), which retrospectively seems a lot better now that I have read more of his work, and The Anubis Slayings (2000), which shows this author at his scheming best and offers a clever, but simple, locked room scenario with a satisfying conclusion. I hope the final entry proves to be a return to these two earlier books.

All in all, The Poisoners of Ptah is an excellent, but flawed, detective story with a rich and multi-layered plot, but you have to take Paul Doherty's weaknesses in consideration and accept them to be able to bask in those riches.

Yes, the next blog post will be a return to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. No, it will not be another Anthony Gilbert entry. 

All the books I have reviewed in this series:

The Mask of Ra (1998)

The Horus Killings (1999)

The Anubis Slayings (2000)

The Slayers of Seth (2001)

The Assassins of Isis (2004)

The Poisoner of Ptah (2007)

The Spies of Sobeck (2008)