The Great Revolt (2016) by Paul Doherty

I'm an idiot and chronologically challenged! Back in 2016, I read Paul Doherty's Bloodstone (2011), a book reviving the Brother Athelstan series, which had lain dormant since The House of Shadows (2003) and Doherty began to work prodigiously towards the Great Uprising of 1381 – the major story-arc of the series. I told in my 2018 review of The Straw Men (2013) that it was my intention to read these new novels in chronological order, but, as you probably noticed, the previous review was of The Herald of Hell (2015). There are two novels between The Straw Men and The Herald of Hell, Candle Flame (2014) and The Book of Fires (2015). Somehow, I had already crossed them off the list in my mind. Why? Because I'm an idiot, that's why. You can jeer and mock me in the comments.

The Great Revolt (2016) is the sixteenth title in the Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan series, set in June, 1831, when the Great Community of the Realm and the Upright Men began their bloody purge of London.

Brother Athelstan is at the mother house of the Dominican order, Blackfriars, where he had been summoned to provide assistance to a papal envoy. The boy-king, Richard II, had returned from a pilgrimage to the tomb of his great-grand father, Edward II, with the conviction his ancestor was a saint and a royal martyr – "a true martyr king" like "other saintly monarchs" in "the misty history of the English crown." So he petitioned "the Holy Father for the formal opening of the process for the beatification and canonisation of Edward II" and since Urban VI has a rival pope, Clement VII, residing in Avignon, which makes it desirable for Rome not to alienate the English crown. Athelstan is asked to help gather evidence in favor of canonization of Edward II, but that's easier said than done. Edward II was a divisive monarch with evidence suggesting the deposed king had been freed and fled to the continent, which would be embarrassing for both King Richard and the Pope. And are the 54-year-old secrets worth keeping to the point of murder?

One of the papal envoys, Brother Alberic, collected evidence against the dead king's reputation in his role as advocatus diaboli (devil's advocate), but when the story open, the door to his room is being battered down. A room with only a very narrow, lancet window and a heavy, elmwood door securely locked and bolted from within, but Alberic had been "brutally stabbed" with "an ancient-looking dagger" nobody recognizes. Even stranger is that Alberic was a former soldier, still young and vigorous, but there's no sign or "even a scratch of any struggle or challenge." Alberic is not the last to die violently on consecrated ground of Blackfriars.

You shouldn't expect too much from the locked room-trick, because it's based on a simple idea that has been explored before, but it was put to good use here and the reason why there wasn't any signs of a struggle was genuinely clever and a splendid hint to the identity of the elusive assassin. Just like Steve, the Puzzle Doctor, something "I haven't seen before." This portion of the plot is basically a historical mystery within a historical mystery, linking the tumultuous events of 1327 and 1381, which proved to be tapestry of long-held, treasured secrets and bloody murder – set against a background resembling the end of days. Brother Athelstan and Sir John Cranston, Lord High Coroner of London, move back and forth between Blackfriars and London.

The footmen of the Upright Men, the Earthworms, were out in full force and directed the grisly
executions and feel slightly guilty for snickering at the lively crowd heckling the unsteady, piss drunk executioners gruesomely botching a beheading as "butter-fingered fumblers." How can you not love the English? But as the revolt drew on, the bloodshed was used to settle old scores and attack the vulnerable as the streets were littered with corpses knifed, garroted or dangling from ropes. So wherever they went there were torn down walls, shredded gates and fences, burning houses and "summary execution at different places along the way." Everywhere they passed where "scaffolds, gibbets and gallows festooned with corpses" or "decorated with bloody body parts and severed heads." Even by Doherty's own standards, The Great Revolt has an incredibly stacked bodycount.

But while they're deep into enemy territory, surrounded by

anarchy and murder, Athelstan and Sir John have their concerns. Sir John wants to be with King Richard when the time comes to meet the rebels and their mysterious leader, Wat Tyler, while Athelstan is deeply concerned about his parishioners. Most of them were taken prisoner and spirited away before the violence erupted, but one of them, Pernel the Fleming, was drowned and her house torched. She may have had a connection to one of the people currently sheltering at Blackfriars. Athelstan also worried about his non-human friends such as his old horse and that wily, one-eyed tomcat, Bonaventure, who had been "his constant dining companion" and credited the cat with "more wit and sense than all his parishioners put together."

So, needless to say, The Great Revolt is an eventful novel in which Doherty took some creative liberties in tying together his fictitious plot-threads with the historical accounts of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and the death of Edward II, which he acknowledged in his Author's Note. But, to quote Doherty, historical novels "often reflect a reality based firmly on fact rather than fiction." I think The Great Revolt succeeded in being both an engrossing historical novel and a well done detective story. Definitely recommended!

By the way, how amazing would it be if Doherty's detective fiction was actually history. Just imagine our history books littered with accounts of Egyptian judges, royal clerks and Dominican friars solving locked room murders, dying messages, complicated ciphers and hounding ancient serial killers.

The Herald of Hell (2015) by Paul Doherty

Paul Doherty's The Herald of Hell (2015) is the fifteenth title in the Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan series, originally published as by "Paul Harding," which takes place in May, 1381, as "the day of the Great Slaughter" of the Upright Men dawned and "the flame of rebellion would burst out" – a period when conspiracies, fear and murder engulfed London. The Herald of Hell is the mysterious envoy of the Upright Men who "appears at all hours of night outside the lodgings of loyal servants to the crown" to intimidate and threaten them with doggerel verses. But the Herald is the least of Brother Athelstan's problem.

John of Gaunt, self-styled regent, protector and uncle of the boy-king, Richard II, has designs of his own with his Master of Secrets, Thibault, secretly meeting with one of the leaders of the Upright Men, Wat Tyler. What they have to say to each other is plain treason concerning the fate of Richard II and an enigmatic cipher, which was seized from one of the Upright Men's courier, Reynard. Only thing that was missing was the alphabet, or key, to decipher the message. Something even the cruel, tortuous interrogations of the time had failed to bring forth. 

Master Thibault allowed Reynard to recover in Newgate with "the opportunity to reflect and mend his ways," which could net him a full pardon from John of Gaunt. And, in the meanwhile, Master Thibault tasked Amaury Whitfield with breaking the cipher. This is where carefully laid plans slowly begin to unravel on all sides.

Amaury Whitfield is a clerk of the secret chancery and skilled in cryptic writing, but recently, he began to understand how far the web stretched and a nighttime visit from the Herald of Hell impelled him, under the cover boon days, to flee to the Golden Oliphant – Southwark's most notorious brothel. There he attended with his minion, Oliver Lebarge, the Festival of Cokayne. But, on the morning following the festivities, Whitfield failed to emerge from his room and the door had to broken down with a battering ram. Inside they find Whitefield dangling from a rope which had been lashed to a lantern hook on the ceiling beam! The key was still on the inside of the lock, eyelet covered, while the windows shutters were closed and barred. The room is situated at the top of the house and overlooked, besides a sheer drop, a garden where guard dogs roam at night. So how could have been anything but suicide?

A highly agitated Master Thibault officially commissions Sir John Cranston, Lord High Coroner of London, and his secretarius, Brother Athelstan, to investigate the mysteries at the Golden Oliphant. And to unlock the cipher.

The brothel proves to be a hotbed of murder, treachery and intrigue with a second cipher to a long-lost treasure, the Cross of Lothar, the presence of a spy of the Upright Men and a second, quasi-impossible murder late in the story when one the characters tumbles down the steep, narrow staircase – which is still a fraction of what happens in this 200-page novel. Doherty ensures his reader is never bored with his characters constantly plotting, and counter plotting, or dragging cartloads of corpses across its pages. Something is always happening and "everything is connected" like "beads on a string."

One aspect I deeply admire about Doherty's best detective novels is how they're written as historical epics without diluting the detective story elements, such as A Murder in Thebes (1998), which is a trick he repeated in The Herald of Hell. While treason is plotted and the Earthworms, foot soldiers of the Upright Men, openly roamed the city and intervened in executions, the attention on the Golden Oliphant remained tight and focused without making it feel isolated. The solution to this portion of the story is excellent with the events at the Golden Oliphant best described as a Golden Age-style locked room mystery transplanted to 1381.

The first locked room-trick is a variation on an age-old trick and how it was done is easy enough to figure out, but the small variation successfully blinded me about another key aspect of the solution. Second, quasi-impossible murder has an equal simplistic explanation, but the aim of that trick was to create the kind of alibi you would expect to find in a Christopher Bush novel. 

Naturally, there much more to the plot with many moving parts and additional corpses, such as the treasure hunt, ciphers and the personal challenges and dangers the friar has to face before he could move towards "a logical conclusion to a most vexatious problem" – reconstructed, piece by piece, during a lengthy exposition. Something that was necessary to tie everything together, but certainly didn't detract from the overall story. The book ends on a kind of cliffhanger that will be concluded in The Great Revolt (2016), which very likely going to be my next read.

So, all things considered, Doherty has plotted better locked room mysteries, but The Herald of Hell is one of his better historical novels in which he seamlessly blended historical events with pure fiction. Highly recommended! 

A note for the curious: The Herald of Hell is a crossover novel by stealth! One of the places that plays a role in the story is a church, St. Mary Le Bowe, where a hundred years ago a Laurence Duket had fled to for sanctuary. The church was "locked and sealed for the night," but, when it was unlocked the following morning, the priest found Duket hanging from a wall bracket and "the King sent a royal clerk to investigate." I knew this sounded familiar, and yes, it turns out this is a reference to the first Hugh Corbett novel, Satan in St. Mary (1986)! Unfortunately, it spoiled the name of the murderer, but to have iron-clad proof of Athelstan and Corbett living in different timelines of the same fictitious universe is the stuff of fandoms!

Rebellion in the Shadows

"I am a man... and therefore have all devils in my heart."

- Father Brown (G.K. Chesterton's "The Hammer of God," collected in The Innocence of Father Brown, 1911)

I attempted to take a break from the locked room mystery, which has been dominating this blog more than usual, but Ellis Peters' One Corpse Too Many (1979) failed to hold my attention and bailed on the book – swapping it for a historical detective novel by Paul Doherty. However, the title in question turned out to be a cornucopia of miracle crimes!

The Anger of God (1993) is the fourth entry in "The Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan" and was originally published as by "Paul Harding," which takes place during the warm summer days of 1379.

A "mere child," Richard II, sits on the throne of England, but power "rested in the grasping hands" of his uncle, the Regent, John of Gaunt. The Regent seems to be unable to bring peace and stability to the troubled Kingdom: French galleys were raiding towns along the Channel coast, while the Scots were terrorizing in the border towns in the North and the peasant class, "taxed to the hilt," were plotting bloody rebellion – referring to themselves as the Great Community of the Realm. A secret society operating under the leadership of a shadowy, cowled figure known only as Ira Dei (Anger of God).

John of Gaunt countered these potential threats by attempting to unite the warring factions of the wealthy, London-based Guilds. As a token of their goodwill and support of the regent, the merchant princes each placed an ingot of gold in a specially constructed, iron-bound treasure chest with six separate locks. Only they, as a group, can open the chest with their personalized set of keys. Or so they assumed.

The fragile alliance between the Regent and the Guildmasters is placed in jeopardy by a string of seemingly impossible murders and the inexplicable disappearance of the gold ingots from the locked, iron-bound chest, which were replaced by a letter stating the bars were taken, as a tax, by the Great Community – signed by Ira Dei. But the problems don't end there for the beleaguered Regent.

One of London's most feared Sheriffs, Sir Gerald Mountjoy, was found stabbed to death in his enclosed garden, guarded by two vicious dogs, but the murderer managed to do this without being seen by the victim or rousing the dogs. Something that seems next to impossible. An equally baffling stabbing occurs, halfway through the book, when someone witnesses the murder of a locksmith. However, the witness failed to observe the assassin who delivered the fatal knife-blow.

And wedged between those two stabbings, there's a poisoning during a royal banquet, where the King and Regent were present, but the problem is that the poisoned Guildmaster ate the same food as everyone else sitting at the circle of tables – raising the question how a deadly poison could have been administrated.

Sir John Cranston, King's Coroner in London, has a full plate with all of these miraculous murders and impossible thefts, but he also has a personal problem occupying his mind. One of his old comrades in arms, Sir Oliver Ingham, prophesied his own death by the hand of his young wife and asked Cranston to bring her to justice in case of his untimely demise. There is, however, one problem: the body is bare of any marks of violence and no trace of poison is found. Nevertheless, Cranston is convinced his old friend was foully murdered and swears his killer will "dance at Smithfield on the end of a rope."

Meanwhile, Brother Athelstan, the Parish Priest of St. Erconwald's in Southwark and Cranston's secretarius, has to contend with a case of demonic possession among his flock. A young woman is apparently possessed by a malevolent entity who accuses her father and stepmother of having poisoned her mother with red arsenic, which is a very specific accusation.

Oh, and there's one more plot-thread: someone was filching the amputated limbs and severed heads of executed criminals and traitors, which were displayed on spikes above the London Bridge as a stern warning. So snatching these body parts can be considered a grievous insult to the laws of the land.

You can say that the plot of The Anger of God is as loaded as a musket packed to the muzzle with black powder, scrap-iron and ball shot. Surprisingly, the plot still comes across as very lean and comprehensible. And the reason for this is both a strength and a weakness of the book.

All but one of the answers provided to the various problems were simple, uncomplicated explanations, which ensured the events depicted in the tapestry of plot-threads were easy to follow. On the other hand, some of the plot-threads, such as the demonic possession and the stolen body-parts, turned out to be so slender and inconsequential that they should have been cut from the book – while the plot-thread about the murder of Sir Oliver should have been written as a separate (short) story. The central idea behind this story had legs, but was completely buried under the other material of the overall plot.

So, what we're left with are the impossibilities, which were, by and large, nicely done with the sole exception of the theft of the gold ingots, which was a cheat. The explanation for the impossible poisoning at the royal banquet probably won't leave you absolute thunderstruck with surprise, but the method has an elegant simplicity that is strengthened by the backdrop of the murder. One really complemented the other.

Lastly, there's the assailant who knifed two people without being observed by an eyewitness or alarming a couple of vicious guard dogs. The gimmick behind these two stabbings is a bit more involved and tricky, but the experienced armchair detective will have no trouble, whatsoever, in figuring out how it was done – since the trick is a slight variation on an old, well-established ploy. However, it was nicely put to use here and (once again) fitted the backdrop (i.e. time-period) of the story. 

 

So, you can argue that Doherty attempted to cram too much into the plot, but can that really be deemed a drawback? After all, The Anger of God was published in the early 1990s, which is a period in the genre when detective stories sorely needed some plot density. Doherty provided that in spates! In any case, the plot-packed book made for an engaging read that always had something on hand to throw at the reader. And that's something you can't help but appreciate.

All in all, The Anger of God does not reach the same heights as some of Doherty's absolute best (locked room) novels, but it is a busy, immersive detective story set during an tumultuous period in (English) history.

On a final note, I found a promising detective novel (without an impossible crime) for my next read. So that break mentioned at the start of this blog-post is coming. So don't even dare to think about touching that dial! 

Passio Christi

"Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no men has even been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it."

- Father Brown (G.K. Chesterton's "The Flying Stars," from The Innocence of Father Brown, 1911)

Bloodstone (2011) is the eleventh entry in Paul Doherty's "the Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan," originally published as by "Paul Harding," which appeared after the series went dormant for nearly a decade, but the ever-prolific Doherty penned six more novels since he pulled his creation from literary limbo – all of them work towards The Great Revolt (2016). I thought this second period in the series seemed like a good place to get reacquainted with Brother Athelstan.

The story takes place during the dark December days of 1380 and opens on the eve of the Feast of St. Damasus I, which takes place during the second week of Advent. So you can chalk Bloodstone down as a Christmas-time mystery, but the spirit of festivities garbed itself in the robes of the proverbial specter at the feast.

Sir Robert Kilverby is comfortably ensconced "in his warm, snug chancery chamber," pine logs were crackling in the mantled hearth and the door bolted from the inside, but even the safe, fortified nature of the room was no security from dark thoughts clouding his mind. The rich merchant was in a lamentable mood: reflecting on the passing of his first wife and regretting his second marriage, which are merely domestic trifles compared to his past sins of a far more serious nature – a grave wrong that made him the custodian of a holy relic.

As a man of wealth, Sir Robert had financed "those depredations in France," which were part of a seemingly never-ending conflict, known now as the Hundred Years' War, but this made him "partly to blame for the theft of that sacred bloodstone." A precious, blood-red ruby, "The Passio Christi," which is said to have miraculously formed out of the blood and sweat of Jesus Christ when he was dying on the cross. The gemstone was the crown jewel of the Abbey of St. Calliste, near Poitiers in France, where it was taken by a notorious band of marauding soldiers.

The Wyvern Company has "a fearsome reputation" as "a deadly, hostile horde from the havens of hells." They were ruthless men of war who had shown "no respect for anything under the sun." During their glory days, these men were the scourge of the French countryside and took everything they desired, "be it a flagon of wine or some plump French wench," but even Holy Mother Church was not spared from their greedy claws – as they scaled the walls and plundered the Abbey of St. Calliste. One of their grand prizes was the sacred bloodstone, the Passio Christi. Officially, they claimed to have found the relic in an abandoned cart, but the crown disputed their claim and ordered the stone to be placed in trust with one its bankers, Sir Richard Kilverby. In exchange, the men of the Wyvern Company would receive a pension out of the coffers of the Royal Exchequer.

So that's how Sir Richard came to be the legal custodian of a stolen relic, but, as of late, he has been repentant about his old sins and bad decisions. The new French Sub-Prior at St. Fulcher, Richer, has warned him about the dangers the possession of the ruby posed to his immortal soul and similar warnings were written down in the Liber Passionis Christi – i.e. The Book of the Passion of Christ. Sir Richard has began making reparations and is determined to deliver the Passio Christie to St. Fulcher, after which he wants to go on a "pilgrimage of reparations" to Rome and Jerusalem, but "some stealthy night-shape" penetrated the secure chamber and delivered earthly revenge. As well as taking the stone from a triple-locked casket.

The death of Sir Richard brings Sir John Cranston, Coroner of London, to the scene of the crime and alongside him is his secretary, Brother Athelstan, who's a Dominican friar and parish priest of St. Erconwald's in Southwark. Athelstan is also the Holmes to Cranston's Watson and usually is the one who finds a path to the solution. One of the many problems facing the friar is having to figure out how poison was introduced into a securely locked and bolted room, which was found to be bare of any traces of toxin. Or how the assassin managed to take the Passio Christi from that same room.

The Nightingale Gallery (1991)

However, this particular locked room was not as difficult to solve as may seem at first. I immediately figured out how the poisoning trick was pulled off, which was practically given away, but also because Doherty recycled this particular artifice from one of his novels from the early 1990s. Luckily, there were more plot-threads and this included one of Doherty's most ingenious locked room murders, but one that was surprisingly underused. It's a trick that should have been used as one of the main plot-threads.

Back at St. Fulcher's, a cowled figure, "cloaked all in black," is targeting the last remaining members of the Wyvern Company: one of them is cut down in the cemetery and another one is gutted along a quayside, but the third one perished in a blazing inferno inside a locked room. The trick for starting this fire was surprisingly clever and deserved more prominence, whether in this book or another, which has its only weakness that Athelstan and Cranston needed outside help to explain the technical nature of the trick. Namely that of an eccentric-looking man, Bartholomew Shoreditch, commonly known as a firedrake "for his skill, knowledge and expertise with all forms of fire," i.e. a pyromaniac with a license! So something fun could have been done with a character like that if this plot-thread had been better utilized.

I should also mention another sub-plot about a gifted painter and talented hangman, a local anchorite, who is haunted by "the ghost of a wicked woman he hanged." The explanation for these ghostly apparitions are, again, fairly easy, but this storyline provided the book with a couple of nicely written, atmospheric and even Carrian set pieces – which added to the overall readability of the book.

Plot-wise, Bloodstone does not rank as one Doherty's absolute bests, but the plot is competent enough to overlook some of its minor shortcomings and the story itself is engagingly written, which showed the author's background as a historian. I think the historical details and the revolt brewing in the background helped a lot in masking some of the plot's shortcomings. So, to cut a long story short, while I have read better from Doherty, I was certainly not left disappointed and kind of want to continue with this insurgence story-arc. But that's something for next year.  

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.