By Paul Carrier
It's 1171, and King Henry II sits on the English throne. He's having a tough time of it. The previous year, knights loyal to the king slaughtered Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, in that city’s cathedral, creating a firestorm.
The international furor triggered by the assassination has not died down. Now Henry faces a dilemma, thanks to the recent murder of a boy in Cambridge and the disappearance of three other children there.
The local rumor mill has it that the murdered child, Peter, was killed by local Jews, who are presumed to have murdered the three missing children as well. Proof is sorely lacking, but a mob has killed a Jewish couple believed to be responsible for Peter’s death, and the sheriff has relocated the city’s remaining Jews to his castle, for their own protection.
Pressure is mounting for Henry to expel all Jews from his kingdom, which he does not want to do, or risk excommunication and interdict, which would deny his subjects the rites of the Catholic Church. Henry does not believe Jews were responsible for the boy’s death or the presumed kidnapping of the other children, but the only way to defuse the situation is to find the killer. It is a search that becomes all the more critical when the other children are found to have been murdered as well.
Thus begins Mistress of the Art of Death, by the late Ariana Franklin, whose protagonist is a female graduate of what was then a famed medical school in Salerno, Italy. A horrific villain commits horrible crimes in the novel, but despite its title and somewhat macabre cover art, this medieval mystery is no horror story.
An orphan raised by adoptive parents, both of whom are doctors, the eponymous mistress is Vesuvius Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar who, as the novel’s title suggests, is a precursor of today’s medical examiner. Adelia specializes in deciphering how people died and, in murder cases, figuring out who killed them. She is brilliant, aloof and socially awkward. “It was said in the (medical) school’s mortuary that Adelia was interested in you only if you were dead.”
Adelia has never been to England and has no desire to leave Salerno, but she finds herself dispatched there to exonerate Cambridge’s Jews. Traveling with a skilled Jewish agent of the king of Sicily and a Muslim eunuch who serves as her bodyguard, Adelia quickly determines that the children were mutilated and killed by a sexual predator who has been at work for years.
Franklin’s readers will find themselves immersed in 12th century England, an island nation replete with xenophobia, sexism and rampant anti-Semitism. It is a land of ludicrous superstitions, blatant hypocrisy and a darkness of the mind, a place in which time is measured haphazardly, at least by the likes of Ulf, a young Cambridge boy whom Adelia befriends. “Seasons went by uncounted in Ulf’s world, birthdays passed without recognition, only unusual events recorded the passage of time,” such as a great storm or the collapse of a church tower.
The international furor triggered by the assassination has not died down. Now Henry faces a dilemma, thanks to the recent murder of a boy in Cambridge and the disappearance of three other children there.
The local rumor mill has it that the murdered child, Peter, was killed by local Jews, who are presumed to have murdered the three missing children as well. Proof is sorely lacking, but a mob has killed a Jewish couple believed to be responsible for Peter’s death, and the sheriff has relocated the city’s remaining Jews to his castle, for their own protection.
Pressure is mounting for Henry to expel all Jews from his kingdom, which he does not want to do, or risk excommunication and interdict, which would deny his subjects the rites of the Catholic Church. Henry does not believe Jews were responsible for the boy’s death or the presumed kidnapping of the other children, but the only way to defuse the situation is to find the killer. It is a search that becomes all the more critical when the other children are found to have been murdered as well.
Thus begins Mistress of the Art of Death, by the late Ariana Franklin, whose protagonist is a female graduate of what was then a famed medical school in Salerno, Italy. A horrific villain commits horrible crimes in the novel, but despite its title and somewhat macabre cover art, this medieval mystery is no horror story.
An orphan raised by adoptive parents, both of whom are doctors, the eponymous mistress is Vesuvius Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar who, as the novel’s title suggests, is a precursor of today’s medical examiner. Adelia specializes in deciphering how people died and, in murder cases, figuring out who killed them. She is brilliant, aloof and socially awkward. “It was said in the (medical) school’s mortuary that Adelia was interested in you only if you were dead.”
Adelia has never been to England and has no desire to leave Salerno, but she finds herself dispatched there to exonerate Cambridge’s Jews. Traveling with a skilled Jewish agent of the king of Sicily and a Muslim eunuch who serves as her bodyguard, Adelia quickly determines that the children were mutilated and killed by a sexual predator who has been at work for years.
Franklin’s readers will find themselves immersed in 12th century England, an island nation replete with xenophobia, sexism and rampant anti-Semitism. It is a land of ludicrous superstitions, blatant hypocrisy and a darkness of the mind, a place in which time is measured haphazardly, at least by the likes of Ulf, a young Cambridge boy whom Adelia befriends. “Seasons went by uncounted in Ulf’s world, birthdays passed without recognition, only unusual events recorded the passage of time,” such as a great storm or the collapse of a church tower.
Adelia initially feels lost in this strange world, which is so different from her beloved Salerno in topography, climate, cuisine and language. But she comes to appreciate the novelty of this (to her) peculiar country and its people, even as she brings all of her medical skills to bear in the difficult search for the monster who preys on children.
Mistress of the Art of Death is a glued-to-your-seat read, with more twists and turns than a New England country road. Adelia loses a close ally, only to find a new one. Seemingly too cerebral and professionally focused to fall in love, she eventually does just that. And what would initially appear to be the novel’s shattering climax is followed by yet another suspenseful development that is not resolved until the king himself intervenes.
Published in 2007, Mistress of the Art of Death was the first of four Adelia Aguilar mysteries. The other books in the series are The Serpent’s Tale (2008), Grave Goods (2009), and A Murderous Procession (2010). Franklin (whose real name was Diana Norman) died in 2011, and The Guardian newspaper, in its obituary, said her crime novels were “distinguished by a seamless interweaving of real and fictitious characters as well as vivid, lavishly detailed descriptions of all aspects of medieval life . . . .” It is an apt assessment.
Mistress of the Art of Death is a glued-to-your-seat read, with more twists and turns than a New England country road. Adelia loses a close ally, only to find a new one. Seemingly too cerebral and professionally focused to fall in love, she eventually does just that. And what would initially appear to be the novel’s shattering climax is followed by yet another suspenseful development that is not resolved until the king himself intervenes.
Published in 2007, Mistress of the Art of Death was the first of four Adelia Aguilar mysteries. The other books in the series are The Serpent’s Tale (2008), Grave Goods (2009), and A Murderous Procession (2010). Franklin (whose real name was Diana Norman) died in 2011, and The Guardian newspaper, in its obituary, said her crime novels were “distinguished by a seamless interweaving of real and fictitious characters as well as vivid, lavishly detailed descriptions of all aspects of medieval life . . . .” It is an apt assessment.
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