Where Joliffe Goes to Rouen

A Play of Treachery by Margaret Frazer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A good book. It has some quirks, maybe flaws, but I still enjoyed reading it.

This series has been very entertaining, but this book took a turn, and it almost didn't work for me. Joliffe has been with his traveling troupe of actors in the first four, solving mysteries while they're putting on plays in rich houses or village greens. Here, he gets hired to go to France (to Rouen, in the part England still governed back then) to serve in a rich household and learn how to be a spy, basically. It's a good idea, opening up cool possibilities for the series, but it takes a lot of time.

It makes this a sort of hybrid book--training for a job first and solving a mystery second. In fact, probably 2/3 or 3/4 of the book is about Joliffe learning how to be a spy while pretending to be a kind of losery drunk guy who's about to get fired. He trains in spycraft and weapons in the night while working as a scribe and watching everybody during the day. All this is fine--but it's meant to be a mystery series and the first part isn't all that fun. It isn't until quite near the end that we get a mystery, which is where it gets good. (I was gonna give it a 3 until that point.) There's a murder and an attempted murder, and at last Joliffe is doing his thing, bringing his skills to bear.

I guess the author wanted to give Joliffe more scope for those skills, and I agree with the idea. I expect the next novel jumps into the action quicker.

It's still a brisk read, even the early parts, and by the end it's quite fun. Recommended--in order.

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Where Joliffe Gets a New Side Hustle

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

Very satisfying novel.

This is book 4 in the series, and I'm glad that they are just getting better--more fun, more interesting, more complex. Joliffe is an actor in a small troupe in 15th century England. He's intelligent, a bit of a smart ass, generally ethical but no saint, friendly but not a pushover. As the series progresses, he's getting more and more focused on solving mysteries he's presented with or involved in; it's not just curiosity and gossiping leading him to solutions, but thoughtful action and deep reflection. The more intentional his investigations become, the more I like it.

[Some light spoilers.]
The players are in London for the first time in the series, playing for their sponsor, when Joliffe is asked to write a play that would help promote propaganda useful to a friend of the lord they work for. The play is a success, helping in a small way to spread a message that will smooth over a trade disagreement with Burgundy, but someone else sends goons to attack them and discourage them from continuing in this way. From that point on, Joliffe is trying to figure out what forces are on what side, and he is enlisted by Bishop Beaufort to do more of that thinking and watching and investigating in his service, pretty much as a spy.

Some of the thinking here, in the form "Maybe it's this faction trying to look like this, or maybe it's this other faction hoping to get a different outcome, or maybe it's a third group thing to make it look like the first group..." was pretty deep and I lost the thread. I'm afraid international trade, beyond the simplest level, does not make sense to me, so I just plowed through some of that, but the story is still entirely clear. The resolution makes sense and is satisfying, though (as I think I've noticed in previous books) I wouldn't mind another chapter fleshing out the consequences and final state for some of the minor characters. Much is implied, but I was enjoying the conclusion and would have liked a bit more of it.

In any case, it's a fun book, and as always the setting is well-researched and beautifully realized. Recommended for mystery readers.

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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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Where Frevisse Solves a Sad Mystery

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

Another good book in this series. (I count the Joliffe books as the same series. I guess it's a spinoff...)

Sister Frevisse is a good MC for this kind of mystery. She's still about 90% nun, but she's got enough spirit and drive to see innocent people protected to still be a useful and interesting investigator. I like the pace and the construction of the mystery and clues, and though I'm hopeful that there'll be more to love in future books, I'm enjoying these quite a bit.

I suppose what I miss is awesome people being awesome, being the smartest person in the room, one step ahead of the bad guy, like Sherlock or Benoit Blanc or Poirot. And I like to see other characters give them their due. So while Frevisse figuring out what really happened is cool, I'd like someone to acknowledge her accomplishments, give her a slow clap or something. Her triumphs are very low-key. In some mysteries, you get a fist-pumping "Yes!" moment when the investigator outsmarts the bad guy. Frevisse's wins here are more or less satisfying, sure, but less awesome because nobody really recognizes her achievement.

Anyway, still fun to read, with excellent use of setting and rewarding historical accuracy. (Apparently.) I feel like I'm learning some stuff while I'm being entertained.

I'm gonna get me a stack of the sequels. Here we go...

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Where Joliffe Learns Stuff He Wishes He Hadn't

A Play of Dux Moraud by Margaret Frazer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Nearly a 5-star read for me. Call it 4.5?

This novel is exactly what it's supposed to be: a clever mystery with interesting characters, set in a well-constructed historical setting. I enjoyed it.

The pace is somewhere between measured and brisk, and that works. There's space for more story than just the mystery, more character development and world-building, because it's not rushing like an action thriller, but it's not slowed down enough to feel plodding. Steady progress, interesting scenes, decent movement all the way through. It feels just about right for pacing.

I like the main character, Joliffe, who is believable in his role as an actor who is pushed to investigate sketchy situations on the sly. He's not an expert in investigation or analysis, but he's sharp and persistent and sneaky enough to get to the heart of mysteries like this one. (Their benefactor, Lord Lovell, needs him to look into the unexplained death of a young man who was going to marry the daughter of a man who owes him homage. The daughter is about to marry a second man, and Lord Lovell thinks something is wrong.)

I don't love the constant sniping between some of the characters, but I sort of get it. Unrelated people in a troupe, forced into company around the clock, probably get a bit annoyed with each other. That's a bit of reality I don't care for. At least it isn't every page.

I've now read three books by this author (collaborators) and they were similar in one thing: when I have several books going, I'm always glad to pick this one up. I have books that languish with a bookmark stuck on page 40, but not this series.

Recommended. This is book 2, but I don't think it matters too much how you read them.

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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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Where Joliffe Plays Detective

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

My first book by this author, and I really liked it. Went back and forth on a score--4 or 5--because I bet I'll like others in the series even more, but why be cheap? It was a fun book, a pleasure to read, so let's give it all the points.

I've read more than a few mysteries set in medieval or renaissance times, and I find most of them are so dreary I can hardly get through them. I think that's intentional--the dreary part, not the "hardly get through them" part--but I don't like it. Maybe life was mostly dreary then, and this is, after all, a murder mystery, but it's not supposed to be a bad experience for the reader, IMO. It's supposed to be fun to read. And this one is.

Fun why, you ask. First, I generally liked the main characters, which include Joliffe and the others in the troupe. (I found the minor characters interesting and well drawn, too, FWIW.) They're not totally best buds, and so they bicker and annoy each other part of the time, but it's friendly enough, and they all look out for each other. They're pretty good people, too, or so it seems to me, with engaging backstories, though I didn't read the previous series where they showed up. In other words, I like to side with them and cheer for them. Second, the setting is well done, with the land, the town, the society, the economy, and pretty much all the details seemingly accurate. Anything out of place is beyond my knowledge. The story inhabits that setting in a way that I enjoy, kinda like when you have a really good diagram of a ship or something and you can say "Oh, that's how that fits together..." Scratches a brain itch. And third, it's a good mystery.

Joliffe and the troupe he's part of have a gig in Oxford for the Corpus Christi festival, and when they're kind toward a mentally challenged theater-loving young man, they get invited to his rich family's home (well, barn) to stay a few days and perform a little for the family and their get-togethers. A body is found outside the barn where they are camping, and though they aren't explicitly named as suspects, they know how precarious their position is, and Joliffe takes it upon himself to solve the mystery.

It's good stuff: good pacing, plenty of intrigue, no dry patches. Now that I know the characters, I'm eager to see more of their stories, as well as others by this author. Fingers crossed.

Recommended for those historical mystery readers like me who haven't already discovered these books.

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