Margaret Frazer, The Widow's Tale
Nov. 18th, 2009 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienAnother Dame Frevisse mystery, set in the days of the weak King Henry VI of England. The rumbling war in France -- ]the 100 years war -- isn't going well for England. A minor courtier dies of natural causes, leaving his widow and her brother with a dangerous secret -- a paper that could bring down the powerful earl of Suffolk.
An unpleasant relative, trying to get control of the estate and the valuable marriage rights of the young daughters, gets the widow committed to Saint Frideswide's, the small convent that is home to Dame Frevisse, as a forced penitent. When her brother manages to get her sprung, Frevisse and another nun are sent along to accompany her back to her home. Soon after they arrive, Alice, Countess of Suffolk and a relative of Frevisse turns up, seemingly well-disposed to the widow and her daughters but determined to get her hands on the paper. Then -- halfway through the book -- the killing starts, and Frevisse finds herself in an awkward position, at odds with her powerful cousin. The murders are not really the drivers of the plot, in this one; it's more of a political and psychological thriller, with plenty of betrayal and suspicion to go around.
An unpleasant relative, trying to get control of the estate and the valuable marriage rights of the young daughters, gets the widow committed to Saint Frideswide's, the small convent that is home to Dame Frevisse, as a forced penitent. When her brother manages to get her sprung, Frevisse and another nun are sent along to accompany her back to her home. Soon after they arrive, Alice, Countess of Suffolk and a relative of Frevisse turns up, seemingly well-disposed to the widow and her daughters but determined to get her hands on the paper. Then -- halfway through the book -- the killing starts, and Frevisse finds herself in an awkward position, at odds with her powerful cousin. The murders are not really the drivers of the plot, in this one; it's more of a political and psychological thriller, with plenty of betrayal and suspicion to go around.
