Where Dame Frevisse Hunts a Killer

The Novice's Tale by Margaret Frazer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an entertaining and satisfying mystery. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and wish GR let me say 4.5, though for now 4 is my most honest rating. Quite good; maybe the next in the series will be even better.

I came here from starting her second series, the one focusing on Joliffe the actor. Realizing there was this earlier group of novels, I looked it up. I found this about equally entertaining and well done.

This series is set in a monastery, with Dame Frevisse as the central character. I'm not actually sure how old she is, but she's smart and tough and intelligent, kinda no-nonsense, though she is decently patient and compassionate. A woman dies at the monastery, and then a second person. That's bad. But it looks like a sweet young novice, a woman as pious as they come, had the most reason and best opportunity to commit the crime. The characters are sufficiently round for the first book in a series, and the world they inhabit is well-drawn and believable. I need to look up the clothes they wear--not too sure about houppelandes and such--but there's time.

Dame Frevisse is sure that the poor little novice can't be the real murderer, and she works to uncover the truth. It is due to her work that the crime is solved, though she gets timely help from a few people, and I like it that the answers don't just emerge accidentally the way some mystery novels do it. I also like it that she isn't sleuthing from beginning to end. When that happens, books can feel too narrow, too forced, and not very real. The investigation here is really just the last quarter or third of the book. This is not a bloodless mystery, not just a brain puzzle, like some mysteries I've enjoyed less. It's a story about people who are living through a strange time, doing the best they can, getting on with the business of living, and the reader is a witness to all of it. I guess, for me, that creates a nice balance of plot, blending the warmth of human lives and everyday interactions with the coldness of criminal problem-solving.

The conclusion is somewhat complex, but not confusing, and that's a plus. It feels more real that way, IMO.

Overall? Fun to read. Good characters to root for. A nice premise. A very good start to a series. So it is recommended. I'm hunting up the next couple, pretty confident they'll be to my taste.

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