By Paul Carrier
Heresy, the first book in S. J. Parris’ series of Bruno mysteries, took our hero to Oxford University, to investigate reports of a Catholic plot against the queen.
In Prophecy, Bruno found himself investigating murders at the queen’s court, while trying to ferret out information about a planned French-Spanish invasion of England to oust Elizabeth and restore Catholicism to the realm.
The peripatetic spy heads to Canterbury in Sacrilege, intent on solving yet another murder, this time to clear the name of a onetime flame. But Bruno also finds himself delving into a possible link between the devotion of Canterbury’s Catholics to St. Thomas Becket and new threats to Elizabeth’s reign.
The more personal of Bruno’s dual missions involves Sophia Underhill, a young woman who captured Bruno’s heart during his stay in Oxford. She had been living in Canterbury with her abusive husband until he was brutally murdered, prompting her to flee to London to seek Bruno’s help because she is presumed to be the killer, which she denies.
Walsingham sanctions Bruno’s trip to Canterbury for an entirely different reason: to get a better handle on whether the city’s Catholics are scheming to dethrone the queen. That’s where Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered in the cathedral there in 1170, enters the picture.
Once England broke with the Catholic Church under Elizabeth’s father, King Henry VIII, Becket’s tomb at Canterbury Cathedral was demolished. But speculation persists that the city’s Catholics rescued Becket’s remains and have been hiding them ever since, perhaps to use them to rally the faithful in a feared uprising against Elizabeth.
Bruno is nothing if not a multi-tasking sleuth with a penchant for getting into trouble. As he tells the reader, he falls into misadventures “as other men fall in and out of alehouses.” As he tries to figure out who killed Underhill’s husband and determine if Becket’s bones have been tucked away by rebels, he stumbles upon the murder of a local apothecary and discovers the remains of two boys who died under bizarre circumstances tied to the Becket cult.
Charged with the apothecary’s murder and other crimes, Bruno prepares to go to trial even as another murder galvanizes Canterbury when a prominent physician is found dead.
Parris serves up a devilishly clever solution to these puzzles when Bruno finally figures out who killed whom. But he has more pressing problems to deal with. Will he be acquitted by jurors who may well have been bribed by his enemies, or do the cards portend a date with the hangman? He survives, of course, but it's a close call.
Whether Parris plans additional Bruno mysteries remains unclear, although the ending of Sacrilege practically screams “sequel.” If so, it will be interesting to see if she sticks to the historical record. Her protagonist is modeled after a real-life Italian monk, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer by the same name who believed that the sun is but one of countless stars and that there is intelligent life on other planets.
Unfortunately for fans of Parris’ fictionalized hero, there may be disappointment in store if the author hews to the facts of Bruno’s life in future installments of the series. That’s because Bruno, who did spend time in England in the 1580s, was found guilty of heresy and burned at the stake in Rome in 1600.
