#Ellis Peters

[lakecountylibrary]

Can you recommend a cosy historical mystery series? I’d prefer a female protagonist if possible

We can! Historical cozies are a little harder to come by than ones set in modern day, but reader's advisor Susan has some suggestions!

Susan says:

You should try Rhys Bowen. She has two series that would be good; The Molly Murphy series and The Royal Spyness series. Start with Murphy's Law and Her Royal Spyness, respectively

Victoria Thompson writes the Gaslight Mysteries series about a detective midwife set about 1900 in New York City. Start with Murder on Astor Place.

Stephanie Barron has a series with Jane Austen as the detective. Start with Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor.

The Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear might work for you, too. It is set in 1929. Book one is just called Maisie Dobbs.

You might try Mary Roberts Rhinehart. She was often called the American Agatha Christie, so if Agatha Christie is a winner for you then definitely give Rhinehart a try.

And finally, take a look at The Cadfael Chronicles about a mystery-solving monk from 12th-centruy England. If you like them, you're in luck: there are a lot. These were written by Ellis Peters (pen name of linguist Edith Pargeter). Start with A Morbid Taste for Bones.

--

I hope there's something on that list that works for you! We don't actually have many cozy mystery recs in our backlog so I don't have a tag link for you, but I invite others to share their own recs on this post as well!

[moxiebustion]

I'm not even remotely religious in any way, but I am begging people who are going to write about a character going into a monastery/nunnery whatever to please, please, please read some of the Cadfael Chronicles before you cast an entire population of people as fire-and-brimstone, self-mutilating, repressed, fanatical zealots.

For the uninitiated, the Cadfael Chronicles was a long series of medieval-set (specifically set in the 12th century) murder mysteries where the gumshoe role is taken by a monk who is well into middle age, a skilled herbalist and a former soldier and sailor who joined the Order late in his life (which for one, did happen!).

Now, there are some dated things about the writing that bears some examining; Ellis Peters (psued for Edith Pargeter) first started writing then in the late seventies (the last book was published 1994, a year before her death), and while she was a fantastic amateur self-taught scholar (she was so good she got an honorary degree from Birmingham University, having never even been to any higher education than high school) she is writing about the time of the Crusades and the Crusaders who invaded Jerusalem and she doesn't really delve that deep into the implications of her characters being involved in that, even though the characters are portrayed as the good guys, especially the titular one. But it's very possible most of the scholarship she had available for research at the time was all Western perspectives, which, you know, history is written by the winners, etc. She has a writers bias towards her protagonist, so of course he is framed fairly glowingly, though not without flaw.

But whether she had a view on the moral implications of the Crusades or not, the way she wrote medieval Britain and medieval Wales is absolutely textually fascinating because she doesn't flinch away from the fact that yes, Britain at this time was a feudal serfdom with slaves included, and was hard on marginalized people, chock full of patriarchy that did affect the lives of her female characters or that the Church was a big landowner themselves, and there was plenty of political tension and violence due to an ongoing civil war, but nonetheless the town the Chronicles are set in and the monastery where Cadfael lives is portrayed as a community.

Seriously. They don't just pray and whip themselves for 'bad thoughts'. The monks can be funny, snarky, and shy, and ambitious. They can be irreverent - yes, even about God, that thing that they are meant to be the most reverent about. They can have petty rivalries, they can annoy one another, even the Abbot, and not be sent for a backbreaking penance. They aren't thumping on bibles and telling people that if they don't make the cut that they're going to burn in hell.

They care. They take care of the children left in their charge, whether they're rich scions there to get an education or some poor thing left on their doorstep. One monk, in charge of the children, expresses real and genuine concern over a new novice that is having horrific dreams, worried that he has suffered a tremendous hidden trauma (he's right) and they're all concerned about what they can do to help him. A pair of teenagers literally fuck on one of the altars and the reaction from Cadfael is rueful amusement at young people's folly, not disgust or anger. They collect alms for the poor, redistribute everything given to them to help people survive. They crack jokes and show each other kindness and...

... look, I'm not saying that there weren't and still aren't zealots in religion. No religion is really innocent of that. And yeah, those zealots have done some pretty heinous things when they're put in charge - see Witch Burnings, Various Inquisitions, Crusades, Terrorism, etc. But I do wish writers wouldn't write about religious life like everyone who ever entered it was either a complete bag of bible-thumping assholes or just miserable all the time.

For one thing, that's really boring. Religion is a way we can tell stories about the complex reality we live in and the rules we think are important when dealing with other people. To reduce all that potential down to Miserable, Repressed, Self-Harming, Witch Hunting Jerks is intellectually lazy at best.

For another thing, you are losing the opportunity to portray a fundamentally queer experience. I don't mean they were all fucking (although some of the proscriptions that they felt the need to write down would rise your eyebrows - hand holding was apparently banned at one point); I meant that this was a group of people that took themselves out of the amatonormative status quo entirely and dedicated themselves to something that wasn't marriage, children, mercantile endeavors or anything 'normal' like that. That was, at the very least, a queer experience with clear queerplatonic overtones (not to mention, there were FTM trans monks that literally went on to sainthood, chosen gender kept intact).

And also? It just isn't historically accurate. Plenty of men and women actively chose a life outside the norm because they wanted to serve god and the community. They're just a group of people, all living together, making space for one another, all trying to serve people in whatever way they can. These people were less raging witch-burners and more Jedi without the lightsaber.

In the Cadfael books, they have brushes with zealots and they're reviled as bad guys every time. One (in the very first book) more or less fakes a whole-ass vision to manipulate the order to go to Wales and try and acquire a Welsh saint's bones and ends up doing even worse things because he believes he is destined for greatness and will get it by whatever means necessary. The head of the mission (who edges close to zealot territory himself and fully buys into the con for his own benefit) tries to buy the saints relics and causes a massive diplomatic incident as a result of this insult that makes him look like an idiot.

The other zealot that gives them trouble is a priest appointed to run the church. This man is as big a bible thumping, hellfire and brimstone dickhead as you might always picture a medieval priest to be and he is uniformly despised by both the monks and the township at large because his zealotry and strict adherence to only the letter of religious law and nothing else actively harms the community.

He's so hated, in fact, that when he (spoilers) dies, the reactions of all and sundry is mostly just relief that he's gone.

The Catholic Church has a lot of sins that it forgets more than it reckons with, but that doesn't mean that life in a monastery was all hair shirts and self-mortification, every abbot a little dictator. People have lived just fine in small communes for a lot of human history and they didn't all have small-minded tyrants continually cracking the whip. Most of them didn't.

I know it's an easy shaft to mine angst from, shoving people into an oppressive environment that they must either endure or overcome. And yes, the way we write about religion is sometimes a product of working through a complicated and traumatic relationship with it. I'm not trying to say any writer can't or shouldn't write that because your art is always supposed to be about putting parts of yourself out there, about telling the world a story about how you see it; and if you're working through something, if you need to tell a story about the scars that zealotry absolutely have and do leave, go for it, more power to you. That's a story that should and must be told.

But if your character is going into a monastery, try to remember that humans are social creatures. We make friends more than we make enemies. Even under intense tyranny, we make allegiances and form bonds and find ways to make the world were in a little bit more bearable wherever we can. And we tend to show each other compassion and mercy, even when we don't always like each other. It's true today, and it was true then too.

Monastic life was a queer experience that happened right under the noses of the dominant power structures for centuries. I think there's a story or two to be mined from that as well.

[victusinveritas]

Sir Derek Jacobi as the retired Crusader Knight come Benedictine Brother, Cadfael. Jacobi actually had his hair shaved into a tonsure during filming, instead of wearing a bald cap wig. Some actors felt that was a little too far; others had their own heads shaved.

Beside Sean Pertwee as Sheriff Hugh Beringar.

Great series of stories based on the novels written by the linguist-scholar Edith Pargeter (1913–1995) under the name "Ellis Peters."

In my family we always watched Cadfael on Christmas Eve. A) because it was on the local PBS station and B) because it had a monk and was therefore deemed Christmas adjacent. That it was also usually a murder mystery was just extra fun.

[fiction-quotes]

August came in, that summer of 1141, tawny as a lion and somnolent and purring as a hearthside cat. After the plenteous rains of the spring the weather had settled into angelic calm and sunlight for the feast of Saint Winifred, and preserved the same benign countenance throughout the corn harvest. Lammas came for once strict to its day, the wheat-fields were already gleaned and white, ready for the flocks and herds that would be turned into them to make use of what aftermath the season brought. The loaf-Mass had been celebrated with great contentment, and the early plums in the orchard along the riverside were darkening into ripeness. The abbey barns were full, the well-dried straw bound and stacked, and if there was still no rain to bring on fresh green fodder in the reaped fields for the sheep, there were heavy morning dews. When this golden weather broke at last, it might well break in violent storms, but as yet the skies remained bleached and clear, the palest imaginable blue.

“Fat smiles on the faces of the husbandmen,” said Hugh Beringar, fresh from his own harvest in the north of the shire, and burned nut-brown from his work in the fields, “and chaos among the kings. If they had to grow their own corn, mill their own flour and bake their own bread they might have no time left for all the squabbling and killing. Well, thank God for present mercies, and God keep the killing well away from us here. Not that I rate it the less ill-fortune for being there in the south, but this shire is my field, and my people, mine to keep. I have enough to do to mind my own, and when I see them brown and rosy and fat, with full byres and barns, and a high wool tally in good quality fleeces, I'm content.”

They had met by chance at the corner of the abbey wall, where the Foregate turned right twoards Saint Giles, and beside it the great grassy triangle of the horse-fair ground opened, pallid and pockmarked in the sun. The three-day annual fair of Saint Peter was more than a week past, the stalls taken down, the merchants departed. Hugh sat aloft on his raw-boned and cross-grained grey horse, tall enough to carry a heavyweight instead of this light, lean young man whose mastery he tolerated, though he had precious little love for any other human creature. It was no responsibility of the sheriff of Shropshire to see that the fairground was properly vacated and cleared after its three-day occupation, but for all that Hugh liked to view the ground for himself. It was his officers who had to keep order there, and make sure the abbey stewards were neither cheated of their fees nor robbed or otherwise abused in collecting them. That was over now for another year. And here were the signs of it, the dappling of post-holes, the pallid oblongs of the stalls, the green fringes, and the trampled, bald paths between the booths. From sun-starved bleach to lush green, and back to the pallor again, with patches of tough, flat clover surviving in the trodden paths like round green footprints of some strange beast.

“One good shower would put all right,” said Brother Cadfael, eyeing the curious chessboard of blanched and bright with a gardener's eye. “There's nothing in the world so strong as grass.”

  —  An Excellent Mystery (Ellis Peters)

[mr-craig]

My latest BookTube video is up now. It's an unscripted ramble in which I ponder whether I've overdosed on Cadfael, find myself pleasantly surprised by my least favourite sub-series of Discworld, and weigh up the pros and cons of Chekhov and Ibsen. Plus a little chat about what I watched and listened to.

[hannah-snow]

So I read a Brother Cadfael murder mystery and yes, it lives up to the hype.

[cultivating-wildflowers]

2024 Reading - July

Finally, things are turning around! I managed to pick some good books to read this month; even the printed books weren't the trial they have been for me lately.

Total books: 10  |  New reads: 8   |   2024 TBR completed: 6 (1 DNF) / 26/36 total   |   2024 Reading Goal: 44/100

June | August

potential reading list from July 1st

#1 - All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy - 5/5 stars ('24 TBR, audio)

mild content warning for language and some sexual content

McCarthy's writing is some of the most gorgeous and atmospheric writing I've ever read. It's also incredibly depressing. I want to continue with the rest of the trilogy but I'm in such a mental funk after finishing All the Pretty Horses that I'm scared to keep going.

More like this: McCarthy's writing reminds me of Wendell Berry in some ways. They both have a soothing, melancholic style that is deeply immersed in the period and setting of their chosen stories. But where Berry tends more towards righteous anger, McCarthy tends toward bleak inevitability.

#2 - The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson - 5/5 stars ('24 TBR, audio)

Not at all what I was expecting from this long-time resident of my TBR. Thoroughly enjoyed. Absolutely would not recommend to most people, but I DID recommend it to Kenzie:

#3 - Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card - 2/5 stars (audio)

Possibly the worst missed opportunity in this series yet. We could have had so much fun with this one. It could have destroyed me emotionally. ANYTHING could have happened. Instead we had the most dull, drawn-out little episode where Bean is basically a vegetable (heh) and his bratty children argue for 200-odd pages. The discoveries aren't incredible, the revelations fall flat, the emotions don't exist, the characters are artless caricatures, and near the end I was yelling in frustration because Card had to go and get snotty and superior in the name of writing a "realistically hyper-intelligent person". All of the little things I dislike about Card's writing? All here.

Side note: I got the actual, physical audiobook CDs for this one and when I went to pick up my holds, the librarian looked at me, looked at the CD case, and said, "You know these are CDs, right? Some people don't realize that." Hoopla didn't have this one on audio and I was already physically reading two books with two more fresh from the library, so I was kind of desperate. The downside is that I can't speed up an audiobook when it's physical CDs.

Second note: The part that had me yelling in frustration had to do with Card's prediction of why artificial wombs might be outlawed in most places in a futuristic world, and why his characters thing most places are unreasonable. His take: "Because they're unnatural. Or they deprive surrogate mothers of a livelihood. Lots of reasons, but it comes down to the real reason: artificial wombs suggest that women aren't necessary, and that really bothers a lot of women." Your Mormonism is showing, Orson.

#4 - Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens - 4/5 stars ('24 TBR)

the usual content warnings apply

This book, something I probably never would have picked up on my own, came to me as a recommendation. There was some content I didn't care for (easy to skim), but the writing grabbed me from the first page and the pacing, characters, and setting were incredible. I haven't finished a printed book this quickly in ages.

#5 - The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karin Yan Glaser - 4/5 stars ('24 TBR, audio)

Simply adorable.

More like this: I've only seen the movie, but it immediately reminded me of "Ramona and Beezus". The description also says it's in the tradition of "The Penderwicks", which I haven't yet read.

#6 - A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters - 4/5 stars (audio)

Tumblr rec time! Some of y'all have been chatting about this one, so I snatched it up.

It was a fun, cozy sort of read. I definitely enjoyed it for the most part, though I felt like the ending kind of dragged. Not particularly interested in pursuing this series.

More like this: I'm not a huge fan of Father Brown (personal taste), but this had the same tone that I recall from the Father Brown collection I've read.

#7 - Network Effect by Martha Wells - 5/5 stars (reread, audio)

As good as ever.

#8 - The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats by Daniel Stone - 5/5 stars

What a treat!!! I was recommending this to people before I even finished it. Quick, fun, engaging, and informative; one of the best nonfics I've read all year. Now I want a buddy adventure film about Fairchild and Lathrop.

More like this: "Salt: A World History" by Mark Kurlansky.

#9 - Agent Garbo: The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler and Saved D-Day by Stephan Talty - 5/5 stars ('24 TBR, Top 5 Anticipated Read)

"There are three kinds of people," [Pujol] wrote later, "those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened."

Ahhhhhhhhh this one was fantastic. Like many, I was first introduced to Agent Garbo via tumblr, and I was really hoping this book would do his story justice; it absolutely does. It is expertly compiled and written. An adventure from start to finish.

Side note: I read excerpts of this to my dad on our drive to church and already have him interested in it.

More like this: "Agent Zigzag" by Ben MacIntyre. <- also shared this one with my dad (he read it in two days) and he loved it and others from MacIntyre.

#10 - System Collapse by Martha Wells - 4/5 stars (reread, audio)

Still not quite sure exactly how I feel about this one, but I enjoyed it overall.

DNF

On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross ('24 TBR) - Either I'm dense or this (at least in the first chapter) is another case of someone with a highly specialized field of study interpreting the larger world through that lens, combined with some historical nuances that I'm completely missing. Possibly it's a worldview conflict and I ought to have pressed on for my own edification, but every page was a fresh slog.

The subject matter itself is fascinating, as is the viewpoint of someone in the medical field in the 60's. (Hello, common practice of fully sedating women during childbirth. I hate you.) The delivery is dry and academic. (Side note: I didn't realize until browsing reviews that THIS BOOK is where THE five stages of grief comes from.)

The Last Shadow by Orson Scott Card - Gave up within the first chapter after rolling my eyes every other paragraph. Hot garbage, which the good folks in the Ender subreddit confirm. I don't care how the series officially ends. Children of the Mind was a good enough conclusion for me.

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner - Not my style at all. The man took his self-ascribed title of "grump" way too far.

Updraft by Fran Wilde - Somehow I didn't really pay attention to the fact that this was YA fantasy until I started reading. That's on me. But between an incoherent opening action scene and over a dozen Special Words introduced in the first chapter alone, it quickly became obvious that this wasn't for me.

Currently Reading:

Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett - As expected, I'm still working through this one.

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell - I just started this one.

[labelleizzy]

Happily, I am here, returning to one of my older fandoms, that of brother Cadfael, a medieval monk of Welsh extraction, who came to the tonsure as a welcome retirement and rest after a well traveled life as a soldier and sailor.

I do recommend the BBC series, additionally, with Derek Jacobi in the title role.

[rhetoricandlogic]

A MORBID TASTE FOR BONES by Ellis Peters

RELEASE DATE: Nov. 27, 1978

A Mediaeval Whodunnit."" And so it is, with Brother Cadfael of the Benedictine Monastery of Shrewsbury--once a rough sailor, now a sleepy skeptic--as sleuth. Because he speaks Welsh, Brother C. is enlisted for Prior Robert's expedition to appropriate the bones of obscure St. Winifred from a remote Welsh village; the ambitious prior's game-plan for advancement requires a saint, any saint. But the villagers don't want to lose St. Winnie, and then the leader of this resistance is found with an arrow in his back and a stab wound in his front. Would Prior Robert--or his lackeys--really go that far? Or is the motive domestic? (The dead man's daughter has two suitors.) Brother C. traps and dispatches the loony killer (disposing of the body with great wit), matches the daughter up with the right swain, and encourages a restless monk to drop out and enjoy the flesh. Considering the materials, this polished Ellis Peters pleasantry could have been much duller, cuter, and talkier than it is.

[hiidenneiti]

"As the world usually goes," he said cheerfully, "he probably has a mind that looks no further ahead or behind than the length of his own fine eyelashes."

Saint Peter’s Fair. Ellis Peters. 1981.

[quotelr]

Every man has within him only one life and one nature ... It behooves a man to look within himself and turn to the best dedication possible those endowments he has from his Maker. You do no wrong in questioning what once you held to be right for you, if now it has come to seem wrong. Put away all thought of being bound. We do not want you bound. No one who is not free can give freely.

Ellis Peters, The Potter's Field

[hedonist-aesthete]

A Morbid Taste for Bones has been getting me through my lunch breaks the last couple weeks.

[fiction-quotes]

The young can be wildly generous, giving away their years and their youth for love, without thought of any gain.

  —  An Excellent Mystery (Ellis Peters)

[brigittemarlt]

Cadfael, the hero of my youth. The medieval Sherlock Holmes in search of truth was a huge influence to me in my law career. His humanity and his wisdom have helped me to grow up. In addition, his anti-conformist personality and his scientific knowledge make him a pioneer In a society frozen by the beliefs and superstition. He is a man beyond his time as a forensic scientist and investigator. Derek has a great gift to play masterfully ordinary men who have extraordinary destinies. He gives to his character a bright melancoly that touches us to heart. His performance has left me indelible memories. What he does In this part is just brilliant.

[kenstewytruther]

need to get a tramp stamp but it’s a map of the shrewsbury abbey and surrounding village

[graaaaceeliz]

I'm reading Cadfael but deciding what music to play whilst I read is so difficult. I love Cadfael, and Brother John, and Jerome is just as delightfully awful and annoying and slightly insane in the books as I'd hoped - I've watched all of the ITV series ft Derek Jacobi at least three times.

It's delightful that Ellis Peters was just as fond of commas as I am.