The Servant's Tale by Margaret FrazerMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
A good second installment in the Sister Frevisse series, probably more of a 3.5 or 3.75 for me. The servant, Meg, works for the nuns at St. Frideswide as a scullery maid. Her husband, the drunken Barnaby, is allegedly killed in an accident when his cart collides with a troupe of actors. Soon to follow are two more deaths, and the acting troupe is in the frame. Frazer highlights the social and class biases at play against the troupe and we get more character development of Sister Frevisse and the head of the convent, Domina Edith, as well as Dame Claire, the apothecary/medical person for the convent. I found the development slow, as many pages are given over to sitting around dead bodies, although this does prove important to the story. It is probably best read in just a few sittings to keep track of some of the smaller details, not all of which necessarily lean toward the "whodunnit" aspect, but provide a lovely and clever sense of connectivity. Motives seem weak for all possible suspects, and that is a bit frustrating as we don't learn the actual motive until the very end, which always seems a bit of a cop-out to me. There are not a lot of clues in this one--but plenty of deception.
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