The Monk Who Vanished by Peter TremayneMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
In this seventh installment, Fidelma seems to have come into her own. Tremayne doesn't need to remind us as often that she is a dalaigh, sister to the King, etc., etc. The mystery here has all the right ingredients: a robbery, an assassination plot, political intrigue, multiple locations, shady-but-not-really characters and wholesome-but-not-really characters. It was a good time, and I'll admit being a bit surprised at the end, which is a bonus! The violence seems to be greater than in previous books, but not particularly gory. The relationship between Fidelma and Eadulf grows (slowly) more complex, and there are good passages wherein Eadulf clearly has to grapple with the pagan ideas that inform and are present in medieval Irish Christianity (for some, it turns out), but Tremayne never gets too heavy-handed with the theological musings, so they are important bits of context, not the story itself. I still get mildly frustrated (as do some of the characters) with the final court/tribunal scene (in many of the books) wherein Fidelma relishes the slooooooooooow reveal, but there's enough elsewhere to make this a worthwhile and engaging read.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment