Oswald De Lacy flees with his family to his friend Godfrey’s remote Castle Eden to escape the plague. Oswald knows from experience with the previous outbreak that it will kill without mercy and he wants to protect his son Hugh, his wife Filomena and his aging mother. Godfrey locks in a strange bunch of people that also want to keep the plague out: there’s Lord Heket and his family, a knight, an aging monk, a fool, a dutch clockmaker, a raven and a dog… But once cut off from the outside world, Godfrey is murdered in his library. And so it seems that the plague isn’t the only killer to consider.
In this series, set in 14th-century England, Oswald finds himself once again in a situation where he has to solve a murder. This time, the plague is a character in the novel (as was the case in Plague land) which gives the novel a raw atmosphere of the dirty 14th century where rich and poor were killed alike.
As everything happens in the castle, there is a very distinctly closed-off setting what I love about a good murder mystery. However, Oswald is not the typical detective. He is slow-moving but cunning, while making mistakes. As a reader, you’ve got plenty of time to search for the culprit and come to your own conclusions. Although, I did only partly worked out who was responsible.
The mystery is well crafted with multiple suspects and several storylines that intertwine. Religion is another theme that comes to the forefront. Godfrey is a religious radical, while Oswald is the third son who was destined to be a monk but whose path altered thanks to the plague.
Are these highly well-written original books? No, but it’s an addictive and entertaining series. So on to the next book ‘The good death’.
In Another Era 