Rating: 
Summary: An Excellent Read and Looking Forward to More
Review: I have read a few of the Owen Archer series and find them tedious with rather fantastic story lines. I was pleasantly surprised with the story of Dame Kerr. I found her extremely interesting and extremely believable. The story was also interesting, without going in to the dramatic. Too many times in a historical mystery I find myself asking if the female character would really do such and such. Not so with Dame Kerr, whose actions and concerns are believable, given the time and place.Robb's historical research has also improved. She deserves kudos for not romanticizing the world and actions of William Wallace. I look forward to reading more.
Rating: 
Summary: Loved the idea of new series
Review: I have read and enjoyed all the Owen Archer books, so I had been really excited to hear about a new series set in Scotland at the time of Robert Bruce. Ms. Robb's research and attention to historical detail are as impeccable as ever, but I didn't really like this particular book as much as I hoped because I disliked her new series main character. The atmosphere and other characters are great, but Margaret (have I got her name right ?) seems unbearably selfish and perfectly willing to put other people's lives at risk (including her brother and uncle)to gain her own wishes. She is also extremely self-righteous. I hope Ms. Robb can make her "grow-up" quickly in the next novel.
Rating:
Summary: Great Start To New Series
Review: I really enjoyed A Trust Betrayed. My only complaint is that we'll have to wait a while for the next installment. Robb has set up a great plot and created some really interesting characters. Will Margaret and her husband be reunited? Most enjoyable book!
Rating: 
Summary: Mystery writers need to deliver mystery!
Review: I thought this story was not up to the standard of the Owen Archer series. The historical detail is TOO painstakingly laid before us and the mystery disappears under the explanations of the intricate politics involved. This would still be forgivable if the novel delivered a good climax and denouement, but both were lacking. At the end of 250 pages, the writer abruptly leaves off and the heroine suddenly trusts a suspicious character for no well developed reason. However, all of the characters are shallowly developed and subject to capricious changes in behavior. After enjoying all of her previous series, I felt that MY trust had been betrayed.
Rating: 
Summary: A great sstart to this historical mystery series
Review: In 1297 Scotland, Margaret already shocked by her husband Roger Sinclair not returning home from a trip to Edinburgh five months ago is further stunned. Roger's cousin Jack, who went in search of his missing relative, has just returned home in a shroud. Jack allegedly died in a barroom brawl. Upon inspecting the corpse, Margaret realizes that someone deliberately and viciously murdered Jack. Unable to sit and wait any longer, Margaret travels to Edinburgh in search of her spouse and Jack's killer. She will soon learn why no one including relatives and her husband wants Margaret in the city, let alone her investigating a murder. Readers can trust that Candace Robb will never betray their belief in the quality of her historical novels. Her latest tale is a historical mystery that is enriched with a strong feel of the era. The story line is exciting as the intrepid Margaret conducts her amateur sleuthing over the objections of seemingly everyone. A TRUST BETRAYED is hopefully the beginning of a new series from one of the better authors of medieval tales (see the Owen Archer novels for wonderful fifteenth century period mysteries). Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Bore
Review: Some time ago I read one of Candace Robb's "Owen Archer" novels, since it coincided with my own area of expertise: Anglo-Gallo-Celtic society from the 13th into the 15th centuries, generally the period of the Welsh and Scots wars, the Black Plague, massive social and religious upheavals, and the Hundred Years' War. I found no gross fault with Robb's historical research, though it seemed lightweight and out-of-date, but decided that she simply can't write her way out of a paper bag. I thought that perhaps this book, set in Scotland in the marvelous year of 1297 -- the year of Wallace's victory at Stirling Bridge -- might be a good deal better, but A TRUST BETRAYED is a dud. It's not the worst historical novel I've ever read (she at least avoided the plunging neckline cliches, and the utterly horrible historical mistakes of BRAVEHEART and ROBERT BRUCE, certainly the most asinine movies ever made about Scots history), but Robb's tedious writing style hasn't improved and she has nothing to say. It took me nearly five days to finish a book that should have been digested in a day, and then I wondered why I'd bothered. Margaret Kerr is unbelievably irritating. She's superficially pious--did I ever get tired of all the masses and praying!--but so what? She's a manipulator, a whiner, a sniveling weeper and a cynic. Probably Robb doesn't realize just how unpleasant her main protagonist is. But then, everyone in this story is unpleasant. Perhaps Robb doesn't like Scots. She certainly doesn't give us any likeable or interesting ones. What kind of "mystery" is this when the primary dead guy turns out to have been himself a weak manipulator? Where the main character's quest--don't laugh!--involves chasing after her husband, whom she doesn't love (or maybe she does), and never catching him? Where her presumably beloved uncle acts like a grouchy ass and says not once but fifteen times, "You should not be here" or words to that effect? Where the leading Scots in this crucial year, namely William Wallace, John Comyn, Bishop Wishart and young Robert Bruce (please, not "THE Bruce", Candace!) never appear at all, and where no important English historical figures enter the story either, except by being distantly mentioned? Historically it is less accurate than it should be. Church law permitted disobedience to grossly illegal or immoral orders of a superior, even as the code of chivalry did, so Andrew comes across as a wimp. Why name a woman character "Tess" when the name "Teresa" was unknown in the British Isles until the cult of Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) spread throughout Europe? That's as anachronistic as putting Gypsies or a "witch" coven into 13th century Scotland. And why do we hear about the bloody events at Lanark at a distance? Wherever Margaret is, we can be damn sure that NOTHING important happens! The problem with this book isn't that it's a worthless mystery, or that there are historial boo-boos, though these both are exasperating. The problem is that it's much ado about nothing. It might have made a decent short story--but it just hasn't enough substance for a novel.
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