Where Joliffe Goads the Bad Guy

A Play of Knaves by Margaret Frazer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've been enjoying this series and the related Frevisse series. This is the 5th I've read, and they've been consistently (to me) right around 4 stars, maybe 4.5. I liked this one even more, and don't feel like I'm being charitable to say it's a 5 star read.

In this historical mystery set in the 1400s, we find Joliffe and the other players being sent to visit a village that has secrets or some difficult undercurrent troubling the people. Their patron has some interest in the matter, so they go away from their normal route to perform in the area and snoop out what's going on. Turns out, there's a lot, and it's all tangled in family histories.

What I like is that Joliffe is getting more and more unapologetically direct in investigating leads and working out secrets to solve the mysteries that they wander into. He's not a detective, but he's intelligent, inventive, bold, and a bit defiant on the inside. He doesn't do it all alone, and the story is about the whole troupe as well as the villagers, but Joliffe's development and activity is the most interesting part of the story.

There are some pretty evil bad guys here, and it's good to see the mystery solved and their evil plots stamped out. That's always fun. And our hero gets to be the crucial factor in that solution, which for me is absolutely necessary in mysteries like this. I lost a little focus and spaced some of the details, like the corners on the overlapping love triangles, but the author gives us a a satisfying conclusion that solves everything satisfactorily, both emotionally and plot-wise. (It might be nice to see the actors get thanked by some folks they've helped, but I can let that go.)

A good series--getting better as we go. Recommended.

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