Brenna B. (demiducky25) reviewed on 5/31/2009 + 161 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 2

This book takes the unique perspective of Adelia, a female doctor in the Middle Ages (from Salerno, Italy where women were allowed to practice medicine) and throws her and her two friends into a crime scene in a small town in England where her job would be seen as witchcraft or worse. She is a mistress of the art of death, meaning that she can analyze a corpse and figure out the cause of death. Her Muslim body guard posses as the real doctor and she as his translator, with their investigator colleague Simon posing as another assistant, so that they can go about their business without drawing too much attention to themselves (or at least the best they can being three strangers in a small town). Their job is to figure out who is brutally killing children in order to exonerate the town's Jewish population, which has since been held captive in a castle and still blamed even as murders keep occurring after their captivity started. The king's tax collector Sir Rowley Picot serves as a help to their investigation, but is simultaneously Adelia's prime suspect.

After hearing so many wonderful things about this book, I really wanted to like it more than I did. Don't get me wrong, it is a very good story with many different twists to keep you guessing at "whodunit" until the very end. However, I personally had a hard time with the author's writing style. It took quite a while for me to get used to how the point of view could jump repeatedly between characters, often in the same paragraph without any real warning! It didn't help that there were a lot of names and characters thrown at you at the every beginning, and some of them don't come back into play until later in the story. Mystery isn't my usual genre and I've been sick all week, which may have compounded my difficulty in reading it, but still, I was expecting to enjoy this story more than I actually did. I've heard there are two sequels, but I'm debating if I should read them or not. I am curious to find out what happens to Adelia and her friends, but I'm not sure I enjoyed this book that much to be that overly concerned.

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