Friday, April 10, 2015

Review: "The Harlot's Tale," Sam Thomas

Historical fiction review of The Harlot's Tale by Sam Thomas

By Paul Carrier

Half the fun of reading a good whodunit is knowing that an engaging detective is at the helm, and Bridget Hodgson fits that bill nicely in The Harlot’s Tale, Sam Thomas’ sequel to The Midwife’s Tale.

Like its predecessor, The Harlot’s Tale is set in 17th-century York, England, during the Civil War that pitted royalists who supported King Charles I against parliamentarians. The novel opens one year after the rebel armies of Parliament captured York in 1644, introducing a puritanical regime that cracked down on prostitution and imposed draconian religious reforms.

Working with her wealthy but sometimes dissolute nephew Will Hodgson and her feisty, streetwise servant Martha Hawkins, Bridget finds herself investigating the brutal murders of a prostitute and her client by a fanatical killer who left biblical citations at the crime scene to show that the victims were slaughtered because of their sinful ways.

When two adulterers are later strangled even before the first two murders have been solved, it looks like overzealous supporters of the new regime are determined to impose religious extremism on York by instilling fear in its residents. With news of a fifth murder, the race is on to solve the crimes before more people fall victim to the rampage.

A number of possible suspects emerge as readers race through the pages of The Harlot’s Tale, but the climax provides several surprising twists, some tragic, others heartwarming. No one likes spoilers; suffice it to say that, when all is said and done, the body count has spiked, there’s plenty of blame to go around, and justice is served, albeit in an unorthodox fashion.

Thomas’ fast-moving tale features detectives who are strong and tenacious women. Bridget is a well-to-do “gentlewoman,” so she is a person of high standing in York. But she’s also a midwife, perhaps the best in the city, which brings her into contact with girls and women from all classes, including prostitutes, during the “travails” of their labor and delivery.

The glimpses of 17th-century midwifery, as Bridget makes her rounds and trains Martha as her apprentice, provide a remarkable perspective, while reinforcing the fact that we are dealing with no ordinary sleuths. In the midst of the crime wave, midwives talk about using goose grease to help a “constricted” woman deliver, and readers learn about the gruesome business of extracting a lifeless fetus to save the mother’s life.

The kind-hearted Bridget is independent and shrewd, but she definitely is a product of her time and place, not some 21st-century version of a 17th-century woman. She is devout (in her own way) and proper, a proud member of the upper crust who expects people to defer to her because of her rank. As York suffers under its new rulers and at least one killer runs loose in the city during a relentless heat wave, Bridget, who is twice widowed and has lost two children to disease, comes to question the value of prayer. Yet she continues to seek divine guidance.

Moderate and thoughtful, Bridget is of two minds regarding the rebels’ determination to rid York of its supposedly evil ways. “I could not deny that a magistrate who suppressed vice did God’s work,” Bridget muses, but “some among the godly” took their reforms beyond what was prudent, by banning “harmless pastimes such as playing at bowls, which I quite enjoyed . . . .” Bridget opposes prostitution as much as the “hot gospellers” do, yet she does not share their hatred of both sin and sinner. She believes “the poverty in which the city’s whores lived and the humiliations they endured were punishment enough for their transgressions.”

Thomas provides a convincing look at what life must have been like in a conflicted English city while the nation was in the throes of civil war.

The Parliamentarians and their fanatical religious allies have “replaced the King’s priests with ministers who loved the sermon above all else and disdained the beauty of holiness,” Bridget tells us. The Puritans “stripped the cathedral of its silver candlesticks and destroyed the memorial to Thomas à Becket,” while also removing stained glass windows from another church in the city. A popular but half-mad zealot preaches fire and brimstone on street corners and forges alliances with the city's leaders.

The third book in this series, The Witch Hunter’s Tale, was published in January of this year. Set in York during the same time period, it opens in suitably dramatic fashion: “The crowd cried out for the witch’s blood, and the hangman obliged.” If it meets the high standards set by the first two entries, it promises to be another great read.