The Servant's Tale

Rating:
Summary: Christmas at St. Frideswide.
Review: It's a very cold Yuletide at St. Frideswide in the 1433. All the sisters are either sick or recovering from colds. Sister Frevisse is also not feeling herself, but she is thrown into another murder investigation when a village lad is found dead. Before they even get anywhere with that, another murder takes place. Who is killing people in what is supposed to be a religious and joyous season? Sister Frevisse must find out. Can she solve it before an even more grotesque murder happens? This is a good book. Ms. Frazer must use extensive research since her period detail and characterization is very good. Even so, it is a very dark and disturbing tale.

Rating:
Summary: Christmas at St. Frideswide.
Review: It's a very cold Yuletide at St. Frideswide in the 1433. All the sisters are either sick or recovering from colds. Sister Frevisse is also not feeling herself, but she is thrown into another murder investigation when a village lad is found dead. Before they even get anywhere with that, another murder takes place. Who is killing people in what is supposed to be a religious and joyous season? Sister Frevisse must find out. Can she solve it before an even more grotesque murder happens? This is a good book. Ms. Frazer must use extensive research since her period detail and characterization is very good. Even so, it is a very dark and disturbing tale.

Rating:
Summary: Traveling Actors meet murder and prejudice in the cloister.
Review: Margaret Frazer has done her research well as she guides us through the medieval landscape of traveling Players, the ordeal of patronage and prejudice, murder and mayhem in village and cloister. The reader is there in 15th century England, cold, fearful, hungry, but soon warmed,and well fed through the kindness and Benedictine ethics of the Sisters. The 20th century does not intrude here except in the discovery that people are universally the same: good, silly, corrupt, flawed no matter what time frame in which they might have lived. Murder is murder, but here, with a lively twist. The incisive, wise Sister Frevisse carefully asserts her strength, protecting the players. Why? She collects the facts overcoming all impediments and finally, is amazed, herself, when the truth of the murders is revealed. Terrific read, excellent research into the period and in the realistic portrait she paints of wandering theatre troupes. A book with authentic historical information combined with a page turning mystery.Read it and you will be eager to consume the rest of her work too!

Rating:
Summary: A bleak cold winter
Review: We visit the fifteenth century priory of St. Fridewides in a bleak cold winter in Margaret Frazer's book the Servant's Tale. all the sisters have caught the rheum (or flu) and a group of players(actors)bring in a badly injured man. His wife, Meg is a servant to the priory and badly wants a better life for herself and her children. This seems unlikely to happen with a maimed husband who was somewhat shiftless in the first place and given to drink.

Before long we have a murder and the players are the chief suspects. Our medieval sleuth Sister Frevisse, wants to disprove this, because of her beginning friendship with this group of people.

I was not as fond of this book as I was with the others in the Sister Frevisse series. Frazer does her usual superb research and brings the fifteenth century to life. Her characters are interesting and you want to find out more about them. This novel is very bleak and sad. I knew who was the villain immediately and hoped I was somehow wrong.

Rating:
Summary: A bleak cold winter
Review: We visit the fifteenth century priory of St. Fridewides in a bleak cold winter in Margaret Frazer's book the Servant's Tale. all the sisters have caught the rheum (or flu) and a group of players(actors)bring in a badly injured man. His wife, Meg is a servant to the priory and badly wants a better life for herself and her children. This seems unlikely to happen with a maimed husband who was somewhat shiftless in the first place and given to drink.

Before long we have a murder and the players are the chief suspects. Our medieval sleuth Sister Frevisse, wants to disprove this, because of her beginning friendship with this group of people.

I was not as fond of this book as I was with the others in the Sister Frevisse series. Frazer does her usual superb research and brings the fifteenth century to life. Her characters are interesting and you want to find out more about them. This novel is very bleak and sad. I knew who was the villain immediately and hoped I was somehow wrong.