My life in books

Elizabeth Bonesteel’s The Cold Between is a murder mystery in space, wrapped up in political conflicts, covert assignments, questions about a 20-year-old tragedy involving the destruction of a ship near a wormhole, and a dash of romance.

The novel opens with an emergency evacuation of a space ship, followed by the destruction of all hands. Years later, the wormhole believed responsible for the event is still off-limits, though scientific curiosity abounds about the exact fate of the Phoenix.

Not far from the region of space where the Phoenix was destroyed, a Central Corps space ship, the Galileo, commanded by Greg Foster, the son of one of the Phoenix’ officers, takes shore leave on the planet Volhynia. It’s not Galileo’s ordinary run, but they’ve been ordered to pick up some of the crew from the Demeter, commanded by Captain McBride, who reported that his ship, while near the wormhole, was attacked by a ship from a previously unaggressive confederation of space traders, the PSI.

The Galileo’s chief engineer, Elena Shaw, isn’t looking for romance. She’s just been through a difficult breakup with her lover, Danny Lancaster, and she’s still confused and hurting. But the retired PSI officer in the bar she’s ended up at calling himself Trey is sensitive, intelligent, and attractive. She takes him up on his invitation, and spends the night with him.

When she returns to the Galileo in the morning, she discovers that her ex-lover has been murdered and her companion for the evening has been arrested for the crime. While she is able to get him freed by providing an alibi, it’s suspect because of her former relationship with the victim.

Despite the initial opposition of her captain, a former friend who seems to have deserted her just as Danny did, Elena sets out to discover the truth behind Danny’s death, with Trey - infamous pirate captain Treiko Tsvetomir Zajec - assisting her to clear his own name.

As trust develops between them and they begin to share background information during their investigation, everything seems to point to a connection between Danny, the destruction of the Phoenix, and a shadowy operation to destabilise relations between the Corps and PSI.

It’s a decent, action-filled adventure with lots of mysteries to sort out. That said, it’s also a bit of a Peyton Place in space, with a great many plot points turning on who’s been involved with who, or wanted to be, to the point where I really doubted the professionalism of the Central Corps, and started thinking a zero fraternisation policy might be a good thing among shipmates. It always annoys me when the forward progress of a novel depends on friends and lovers not being truthful with each other, and there’s a bit too much of that here for my taste, too. Though the main relationship, between Elena and Trey, is refreshing in its honesty - and doomed by it, as well.

I also could have used just a bit more information about the society all this is taking place in. Is it a federation of planets? Or are most planets independent, and the obviously military Central Corps a primarily Earth-based organisation that negotiates with other planets for trade and such. What roe do the PSI play? And what about the occasionally mentioned Syndicates - where do they fit in? I didn’t understand the relationships and power dynamics between organisations and planets, and that made the politics within the story very ... unanchored. What was at stake in the various plots and conspiracies Elena and Trey kept stumbling upon?

All in all, I enjoyed it in a modest way, but I won’t be dashing out to buy the next in the series.

In a near-future America wracked by civil war, wounded army doctor Janet Watson, a surgeon who no longer has two flesh and blood arms with which to operate, heads to Washington. In addition to the physical trauma of her injury and the retrofitted prosthesis that doesn’t quite work right, she is dealing with the knowledge that her final military action was a shameful one, its veterans viewed with disgrace. Battered by war, without a promise of work or the skills she was trained in, alone in a city that distrusts veterans and dies not seem too fond of black people who appear homeless or out of work, Watson’s immediate future seems bleak. Then, a chance encounter with another veteran she once treated leads to an opportunity to share an astonishingly inexpensive apartment with the unnerving and enigmatic Sara Holmes, a brilliant, aristocratic, apparently wealthy, black woman who diagnoses Watson’s trauma and insecurities on the spot, and then challenges her to share the apartment.

This is the opening to Claire ODell’s Holmesian science fiction novel A Study in Honor.

Watson’s life with Holmes is indeed a challenge for her. Holmes gives peremptory instructions, never consults Watson, has strange visitors, and generally behaves in an enigmatic and annoying fashion. She takes Watson out to dinner on occasion, gives her expensive gifts, at times almost appears to be courting her in a peculiar fashion. Watson is by turns curious, angry, resentful, and bewildered. She finally wrests a minimum of information from Holmes, who acknowledges that she is government agent, but can say no more fir security reasons.

Meanwhile, Watson struggles with PTSD and her job as a med tech at the VA, where her medical skills are barely utilised - she essentially does initial intake interviews with each patient and records the information in the VA files. She’s frustrated by the inadequate care the veterans receive, and by her inability to be a doctor, to order tests and make the attempt to find out whether there is anything to be done for the people she sees again and again.

Everything changes when Belinda Diaz, a patient that Watson has seen repeatedly, been deeply concerned about, and risked her job to order diagnostic tests for, dies suddenly. Watson digs into the records to see if the death was preventable, but fails to find any indication of the tests she herself ordered. On her way home that night, she’s attacked, almost killed, but Holmes appears unexpectedly, saving her life.

If there was any doubt that the two events were connected, that vanishes when Holmes discovers that three other veterans from Diaz’ unit died the same week. Holmes, with Watson in tow, makes a flying weekend trip to Miami and Michigan, where the other deaths occurred. When they return, Watson reports for work, to learn she has been ‘fired with cause’ - which they are not required to explain.

As they investigate, Holmes and Watson are drawn deeper into a conspiracy that reaches into dangerous places in government, industry and the military. It’s a complex plot, and, like some of the investigations the original Sherlock undertakes for Mycroft, ends up being too politically sensitive for the truth that Holmes and Watson uncover here to be revealed. But through it all, a solid partnership is forged between Holmes and Watson - who ends up getting a real job as a respected surgical specialist, and a brand new prosthesis that will allow her to work with confidence, as a thank you from an intelligence agency that cannot acknowledge what she’s done in any other way.

And yes, the door is open for more of Sara Holmes and Doctor Janet Watson, and I dearly hope that O’Dell is inclined to write it, because these are wonderfully developed characters, clearly inspired by Conan Doyle’s heroes, and yet equally clearly their own fully realised selves. And who doesn’t need a black, female, Holmes and Watson duo in their lives?

The sixth of Peter Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma mysteries, The Valley of Shadow, finds Fidelma on her way to the remote western mountains of Cruacha Dubha, the homeland of Laisre, chieftain of Gleann Geis. Laisre and his lands remain pagan, but he has recently sent to King Colgu of Muman, Flidelma’s brother, saying he is willing to enter negotiations to allow a priest to come to his chiefdom, to build a church and a school. Colgu has appointed Fidelma as his emissary, thinking her best suited to speak on behalf of both himself and the church, as a princess of Muman, a religieuse, and a dalaigh. Brother Eadulf accompanies her.

But as they approach the mountains, Fidelma and Eadulf are met with a horrific sight. Thirty-three young men, all monks or priests by their tonsures, ritually killed and left by the road into Gleann Geis. Is it a warning? A threat? Despite the danger, Fidelma is determined to carry out her mission, but now she has another task as well - to find out who is responsible for the murder of her brothers in Christ.

This time, Fidelma finds herself in the midst of not only a negotiation over a request that no one but the chieftain appears to want, but an investigation into a horrific mass murder, and a complex plot against her brother’s throne. A solid mystery, with many twists and turns, it’s also an interesting look at Irish temporal and religious political conflicts in the early years of Christianity in Ireland.

European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman is Theodora Goss’ second novel featuring the members of the Athena Club - Mary Jekyll, Diana Hyde, Beatrice Rappaccini, Catherine Moreau, and Justine Frankenstein, all the female creations of men of science, members of the secretive organisation the Société des Alchimistes. The monstrous gentlewomen have a new mission - a journey to the Continent, to rescue if they can another woman they feel is by nature a member of their unusual club, Lucinda Van Helsing - whose existence they have become aware if through Mary’s former governess, Mina Murray Harker (who readers of Victorian science fantasy will recognise as the bride of Jonathan Harker). But something is brewing among the English members of the Society, so the gentlewomen decide to divide their numbers - while Catherine hunts down the clues to what is happening in England, and Beatrice takes care of Diana, who Mary feels is still too young and impetuous to be left to her own devices, Mary and Justine (passing as a man) will go to Vienna. Thanks to Mary’s employer, the world’s only consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, Mary and Justine will have help once they reach Vienna, as Holmes has armed them with a letter of introduction to a well-positioned woman of society, the widow Irene Norton, née Adler. As one might expect, this division of labour is rejected by Diana, who follows Mary and Justine, disguised as a young boy, and ultimately proves to be as essential to the mission as the others.

Of course, with the names Harker and Van Helsing so prominent in the narrative, it’s no surprise that this Athena Club adventure deals with vampirism, drawing not only on the original Bram Stoker Dracula, but also on the less familiar novella by Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla, as basis and inspiration for some of its key events.

The literary nerd in me loves what Goss is doing in these novels, playing with the tropes of the foundational literature of both the sf and mystery genres, integrating real cultural history (such as the pivotal role played by Sigmund Freud in the rescue of Lucinda Van Helsing, and ongoing references to the suffragette movement) into the fictional accounts of these “monstrous” women. Goss’ treatment of Irene Adler is a thing of beauty, and her mentorship of Mary, Justine and Diana - giving them an example of an intelligent, accomplished woman fully the equal of any man and prepared to work outside of convention and the law to achieve her goals - is a delight to read.

The novel is written in the same style as the first, largely a standard narrative, but interrupted at regular intervals by conversations after the fact among the members of the Athena Club, in a kind of meta-narrative that is occurring after the fact, back at home, as Catherine reads her account of their adventures to the others and they discuss what really happened, and how Catherine has portrayed them. This technique adds to our understanding of the characters and their relationships, and provides just enough release of tension to reassure us that our heroines will survive, without giving away too much of the story in advance.

The story ends on a cliff-hanger - while the main plot, the rescue of Lucinda and the confrontation with the Société des Alchimistes - is brought to a conclusion in one case, and a suitable resting point in the other, other concerns which had seemed peripheral to the narrative suddenly take prominence, and suggest the shape of the next novel, which I most eagerly look forward to.

Mary Russell’s War and Other Stories of Suspense is a collection of short fiction by Laurie R. King. The title story, Mary Russell’s War, is a novella that I’ve previously read as a stand-alone ebook, but the other pieces, all part of the Mary Russell saga, were new to me.

“Mary Russell’s Christmas“ is a delightful story about Mary’s childhood, her charming rogue of an uncle, Jake, and her introduction into the fine arts of card sharking and con jobs. And how she got her throwing knife.

“Beekeeping for Beginners” retells the story of Mary Russell’s first meeting with Holmes, and the early days of her “apprenticeship,” from the perspective of the retired consulting detective.

“Mary Russell’s Marriage,” which is set just after the events of A Monstrous Regiment of Women, is exactly what the title suggests, an account of the wedding of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. Naturally, these two can’t just have a simple wedding, either in church or registry office - there has to be a mystery, a scheme, a unique circumstance, an adventure.

“Mrs. Hudson’s Case” features Holmes’s intrepid housekeeper in a case that both she and Mary Russell suspect that Holmes would not deal with appropriately - so they do what must be done, making certain that the great detective never knows the truth.

“A Venomous Death” is a short story indeed, merely a few pages in which Holmes almost immediately deduces the murderer. It’s mostly about bees.

“Birth of a Green Man” deals with the backstory of Robert Goodman, one of the characters of The God of the Hive.

“My Story” is a piece of metafiction, in which Mary Russells discusses how it came to be that she chose one Laurie R. King the editor of her volumes of memoirs, and the madcap adventures surrounding the timing of her decision. Its sequel, “A Case in Correspondence” is told entirely in postcards, letters and newspapers articles, and deals with the mysterious disappearance of Holmes and the political repercussions of the volume of Russell’s memoirs published as “The God of the Hive.”

In “Stately Holmes,” Russell and Holmes return to Justice Hall to deal with a singularly material ghost.

With the exception of the novella, Mary Russell’s War, which I have spoken about elsewhere these are for the most part slight pieces, enjoyable largely for the small glimpses into the characters lives when they are not in the throes of a full-blown adventure. I found the ones set earlier in Russell’s life the most interesting, with “Mary Russell’s Marriage” being perhaps the most moving, as it gives us a glimpse into the emotional lives of two people singularly notable for keeping their emotions quite firmly to themselves. The collection as a whole is best seen as something fun to read for Mary Russell fans awaiting the next novel.

Annelie Wendeberg’s historical suspense novel The Fall is a sequel to The Devil’s Grin, which introduces the character of Anna Kronberg, a brilliant German medical doctor and bacteriologist, living as a man, Dr. Anton Kronberg, in the Victorian England of Sherlock Holmes. I rather enjoyed the first volume, first because of the inclusion of Holmes as a character, and second, because of the interesting portrayal of the practical and psychological issues of being a woman passing as a man.

It took me longer to engage with this book, in part because it’s primarily a novel about Kronberg and Moriarty, with Holmes appearing infrequently, and because in this novel, Kronberg is now living openly as a woman, because it is now possible, though still extremely unusual, for a woman to be a physician or scientist.

As the title suggests, this novel take place during the run-up to the canonical Conan Doyle story “The Final Problem” and provides a plot for Moriarty’s to engage in and a reason for the final confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty to take place in Germany. And of course Kronberg is at the centre of it.

Moriarty’s plans require the expertise of a medical researcher capable of creating almost single-handedly the field of germ warfare. Having been connected to the organisation that Holmes and Kronberg brought to justice in The Devil’s Grin, he knows that Anton Kronberg is the scientist he needs, but it has taken some time to track Kronberg down, and realise that the woman he finds at the end of the trail is in fact the brilliant supposedly male bacteriologist he seeks. True to form, Moriarty kidnaps both Kronberg and her father, using the threat of harm to the old man to force her to create weaponised anthrax.

What follows is a deadly game of wits and power plays. Kronberg manages to get word of Moriarty’s plans to Holmes, while trying to persuade Moriarty that she is becoming more amenable to his plans. We know, of course, that Holmes will succeed in breaking Moriarty’s organisation in the end, and that Moriarty is doomed, but the price paid for this outcome by Kronberg is both high and bitter in the extreme.

As I said, it took me a while to fully engage, but the psychological complexity of the unfolding relationship between Moriarty and Kronberg, two brilliant and damaged people, both in their own ways tied as much to Holmes as they are to each other, made for fascinating reading.

The third Kronberg novel, The Journey, begins with Holmes and Kronberg - five months pregnant with Moriarty’s child - hiking through wilderness, hiding from Sebastian Moran, who is undoubtedly seeking them both to avenge the death of Moriarty. It’s not an unexpected scenario - even the most casual reader of the Holmes canon knows that it will be three years from the fall at Reichenbach before Holmes resurfaces.

The novel is indeed about a journey - several of them in fact, both geographical and psychological.

Kronberg’ pregnancy gives her several months of grace before Moran will take his revenge. Moriarty, before his death, gave orders that of anything should happen to him, she should not be harmed until after his child is born. The birth of the child is key to the disbursement of Moriarty’s considerable fortune. As Moriarty’s widow, she is entitled to inherit one-third as dower right, and to be the executor of a trust which provides for the child until their majority. Moriarty’s relatives want to control the child and the money. Moran wants to be paid.

Holmes and Kronberg spend her pregnancy travelling throughout England and Europe, sometimes together, sometimes not, knowing that when she delivers, the day if reckoning will come, one way or another. Hunted and hunting simultaneously, seeking to avoid Moran while setting a trap fir him at the end of the chase.

Meanwhile, Kronberg is forced to deal with her pregnancy, her hatred if Moriarty and inability to feel anything for the child, the loss of freedom, career, independence, that will follow on becoming a mother.

And emotionally, the time spent together, learning more about each other, brings Holmes and Kronberg closer in some ways, further apart in others.

I found the ending .... unsatisfying. The back and forth, maybe we have a relationship, maybe we don’t unravelling of emotions between a deeply repressed and controlled Holmes, and a woman who, like Kronberg, fears the ways in which a relationship might trap her as much as she might long for emotional intimacy with a man who is her intellectual equal, are perfectly good reasons for them to part after the birth of Kronberg’s child. Holmes remains in Europe, to hunt down Moran, Kronberg relocates to America, a more progressive country where she may find a career while living openly as a woman. That part worked.

What seemed too facile was the sudden deep attachment she has fir her daughter. She has struggled with this from the moment she became aware of her pregnancy. The abusive, manipulative, often violent nature of her relationship with Moriarty has weighed on her mind throughout. And it all vanishes in the act of giving birth. I could accept the beginnings of a change, but for all the trauma, all the ambivalence about being chained by motherhood that she expresses, to resolve itself into unconditional acceptance and love - it does not seem realistic.

With the two most interesting aspects of the series so far - the connection with Holmes, and the struggles of a brilliant woman living a life that rejects conventional female roles, functions and behaviours - apparently gone from the ongoing narrative line, I’m not at all certain that I’ll seek out any further adventures of Anna Kronberg.

Lock In is possibly the most interesting of John Scalzi’s novels that I’ve read to date, and not just because of the disability angle, although that is a significant part of it. On face, it’s a science fiction murder mystery, with lots of puzzles and sleuthing, murders and attempted murders and even an explosion, and it all takes place within the context of a cosy-cutting government bill that will materially affect the lives of millions of severely disabled people who are dependent on expensive, usually government-subsidised, life support mechanisms and assistive devices.

The setting is America, in a world changed by the emergence of a new disease, named Haden’s Syndrome after one of its more prominent victims. It looks a bit like the flu, then meningitis follows. Many die. Some recover, unchanged. A small proportion, however, are so neurologically altered that they can no longer control any of the voluntary functions of the body - they are locked in, unable to move, speak, blink, but they are fully conscious. Massive research has enabled these people to be fitted with neural nets - computers integrated into their brains - which allow them to control external devices, from voice synthesizers to robotic bodies, affectionately called “threeps” - and to interact with each other in a virtual space known as the Agora. More, it is discovered that a tiny fraction of Haden survivors who are not locked in, known as Integrators, have neurological changes that allow them, when fitted with a special neural net, to virtually ‘host’ the awareness of a locked in Haden, allow them to experience the sensations of being in a functional human body. All of this - the research, the nets, the robotic bodies, the computer space needed to host the private and public online worlds of the Hadens - is government subsidised, and is the basis of an entire industry. And all will be subject to massive change when the new laws come into effect.

The story begins with a murder investigation. It’s newly minted FBI Agent Chris Shane’s first day on the job. Shane, along with Agent Leslie Vann, a firmer Integrator, are part of the FBI section that handles crimes involving Hadens. An Integrator, Nicholas Bell, has been found, seemingly confused, in a hotel room with a very bloody, very dead corpse with no ID. The fact that Bell is an Integrator means that even if his body killed the unknown man, he himself may not have committed the murder. It’s the start of very complicated case involving murder, industrial sabotage and conspiracy to manipulate an entire industry for corporate gain that will end up having implications for all Hadens in America.

The novel explores in considerable detail the practical, ethical and legal issues arising when a person can act at a distance through a robotic body, or through another, specially enhanced human being, and that aspect of the book is fascinating. Inevitably, all sorts of disability issues arise, from the question of financial support for research and accommodation, to discrimination, harassment and hate crimes. Particularly interesting is the debate over accommodation versus cure, which parallels such conversations in and around a number of real life communities, including the Deaf and neurodiverse communities.

Something that’s been noted in other places is Scalzi’s choice not to specify the gender of the protagonist. We have no idea of Chris’ biological sex, nor their identification as man, woman, non-binary, or agender. It makes sense - Chris was infected at the age of three, and has lived outside their human body ever since - gender doesn’t make a lot of impact when one’s primary presentation is a metallic genderless robot, and one can experience physical desire only through the body of another person, who could be of any gender. If Chris has a sense of being gendered, it doesn’t enter into their public life and doesn’t need comment in a book that focuses entirely on their public life. Similarly, it s not until late in the book that it Is confirmed that Chris is biracial - again, it’s nit something you can tell from the metal bodies that Hadens use to move in the physical world.

One weakness of the book is that we have no idea what is going on with research and support for Hadens in other parts of the word, or whether any of these technologies exist in other developed nations, or how international trade might affect the various plots and machinations to take control of the American Haden support industry. We’re not even sure if the Agora is for American only.

All in all, a complex and interesting novel, with a solid story, and more meat on it than one finds in some of Scazi’s other novels, which have tended to be exciting and engaging tales, without a lot to challenge one’s thinking. Lock In does both.

So, I’ve been doing a fair bit of comfort reading lately, in between the other things I want to read, like Hugo finalists and some social justice and #ownvoices reading. My current comfort go-to series is the Sister Fidelma books by Peyer Tremayne. The Sister Fidelma books are soothing things for me, for all their murder and even occasional danger for the main character. There’s something about this precise combination - the idea of a female cleric who solves crimes in a historical setting that, to be honest, I find particularly fascinating because of my own Celtic heritage - that appeals to me. So...

Shroud of the Archbishop, the second volume in the Sister Fidelma mystery series by Peter Tremayne, follows closely on the events of the first volume. After the death of Archbishop Deusdedit of Canterbury, mentioned in the first book, Absolution by Murder, his chosen successor, Wighard, has travelled to Rome to be confirmed in his position by the Pope. As his secretary, Brother Eadulf has naturally accompanied him. And fortuitously, Sister Fidelma has also been ordered to Rome, to present the new Rule of her abbey of Kildare to the Holy Father for approval.

When Wighard is murdered and an Irish monk working in the Vatican’s Foreign Secretariat is arrested as the most likely suspect, the political implications of the case demand an unusual degree of sensitivity. Thanks to their successful unraveling of the murders during the Synod of Whitby, Sister Fidelma and Brother Eadulf are called on to investigate the murder and determine the truth.

Their investigation tajes many twists and turns, as not one, but many crimes, past and present, are found to have come together in a vast sequence of murder, false identity, theft and vengeance. And again, what makes the tale particularly fascinating to me is the wealth of historical detail that includes everything from a discussion of the relics collected by Empress Helena to the fate of the great Library of Alexandria.

A sold mystery, with a wonderful historical setting and a formidable detective. I find myself very much enjoying Sister Fidelma as a character. Her profession, status, and cultural background give her an at times almost modern feeling, as a woman sure of her abilities and rights. And I’m liking the development of the relationship between Fidelma and Eadulf - which, in a time before celibacy became a requirement for members of religious orders, could develop in so many interesting directions.it’s nice to see a man appreciate a woman who is at least as intelligent and educated as he is.

Suffer the Children, the third of the Sister Fidelma novels, begins in a way that speaks to some of what I particularly enjoy in these novels, which is the (somewhat idealised) depiction of medieval Ireland as a place where women held status in society unparalleled in the rest Europe. It’s a world where a woman like Fidelma has no fear of riding alone from her home at the abbey of Kildare to Cashel, to answer a summons from her brother Colgu, the heir to the king of Muman, one of the five ancient kingdoms of Ireland. And a world where a woman can be a high-ranking official of the judiciary, or any other profession.

As one would expect, Colgu has a murder mystery for Fidelma to solve, one that threatens the peace between Muman and the neighbouring kingdom of Laigin. Dacan, a scholar of great renown and one with family ties to the king of Laigin, is dead, murdered at the abbey of Ros Ailithir. Brocc, the abbot of Ros Ailithir, and cousin to the king of Muman, is charged with responsibility for the crime. Because of the status of the deceased, the king of Laigin, as kin of the deceased, has demanded the return of Osraige, a disputed petty kingdom currently owing homage to the king of Muman, as an honor-price from the family of the person accused of responsibility for the death.

The king of Cashel is dying of plague, and Colgu, as tanaiste, or heir-elect, has commissioned Fidelma to investigate the murder and argue the case before the High Court at Tara in three weeks time. On her way to the abbey, located in the clan lands of the Corco Loígde, who are close kin to the king of Osraige, Fidelma is presented with another concern. She and her escort encounter a band of warriors, burning a village where, the leader claims, the plague has been active. But there are bodies in the village of people who have clearly died from violence, not plague, and Fidelma finds survivors, a young nun and a few children, who confirm the massacre of everyone else in the village. Worse, the leader of the band is the local chief and magistrate, who sits on the council of Salbach, the chieftain of the Corco Loígde.

Once more, Fidelma is faced with a crime - indeed, a series of crimes - that combines violence and politics. At the heart of the case is the search for the identity of the hidden heirs of the ancient princes of Osraige, who ruled before the clan of Corco Loígde. Everyone involved with the case has been looking for them, and the final pieces of the puzzle will not fall into place until Fidelma herself can find them.

The fourth Sister Fidelma novel, The Subtle Serpent, opens with a double mystery. Fidelma is on her way to the religious community of The Salmon of the Three Wells, located within the kingdom of her brother King Colgu, to investigate the murder of an unknown woman - her body found naked, headless, in a well, clutching a simple cross. While en route, the ship she is travelling on encounters an abandoned Gaullish merchant ship. Her cargo holds are empty, there are signs of blood recently shed, and perhaps worst of all, in one of the cabins Fidelma finds a book she had given as a gift to her dear companion of earlier adventures, Brother Eadulf.

As Fidelma seeks to solve both mysteries, she becomes aware that there is something very strange going on in the abbey and the surrounding community. There is open conflict between the abbess, Draigen, and the local chief, Adnar. Draigen herself is both arrogant and ambitious, and seems at times to be trying to impede Fidelma’s investigation. The abbey itself seems subtly wrong to Fidelma - there are few older members, and one of them, Bronach, is treated with much disrespect, as is Bronach’s protegee, Berrach, a severely disabled sister. Two sisters are missing - overdue to return from an errand - and though the younger one’s physical description matches the body, the abbess insists it cannot be her. And there is something strange about the abbey itself - sometimes strange noises seem to issue from the earth below the abbey, which Draigen says are the result of tidal water filling caves that riddle the area.

Meanwhile, Ross has been investigating the abandoned ship, and has discovered that it was brought to shore nearby, by a party of Irish warriors of the clan Ui Fidgenti, who pit the crew to work in the local copper mines. The ship itself vanished overnight while the Ui Fidgenti celebrated.

Fidelma finds things to concern her at Asnar’s stronghold as well. Draigen’s former husband, Ferbal, a bitter misogynist, lives in the compound. Adnar has guests - Torcan, prince of Ui Fidgenti and his companions, and Olcan, son of the local overlord, both families with ambition and grudes against her brother. And everywhere, in the abbey, on the abandoned vessel, even on the books in the abbey, Fidelma finds traces of an unusual red clay, commonly found in copper mines.

Another satisfying mystery from Peter Tremayne, complex and rich in atmosphere, drawing on both Irish history and legend, and the history of the Irish and Roman churches and the conflicts between them. Fidelma must uncover the secrets of the community, and of politics and greed, to solve the mysteries, and then, perhaps most satisfying of all, she sets forth fir new adventures with Eadulf at her side.

This week I felt a need for some light but still interesting reading, which brought to my mind a series I’d gotten interested in through reading several short stories, but had not gotten around to reading any of the novels. That series is Peter Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma books, set in the seventh century British Isles (primarily Ireland) and featuring an Irish religieuse and lawyer of noble blood and deep perceptions.

The first novel of the series is set in 664 AD, during the Council of Whitby at the abbey of Streoneshalh, run by Hild (St. Hilda), relative of King Oswy of Northumbria, a powerful woman in her own right. At this time, there was a great deal of antagonism between the Roman and Irish/Ionian churches, which were different in a number of small, and not-so-small ways. The Council of Whitby was convened to present arguments before King Oswy for which church should be given royal sanction in Northumbria. Sister Fidelma is present as an advisor on legal matters to the Irish delegation.

On their way to the abbey, Sister Fidelma’s party encounter a grim sight, the hanged corpse of a fellow brother of an Irish church order, and learn that he was killed because his defense of the Irish church was taken as an insult by the local lord, Wulfric. This violence pales, however, before the crime that Fidelma is called upon to investigate - the murder of Etain, abbess of Kildare, and a major proponent of the Irish church. In order to remove all suggestion of possible investigative bias, due to the politically charged atmosphere surrounding the crime, Fidelma is asked to conduct her investigations jointly with a young Saxon monk of the Roman church, Brother Eadulf.

The book follows the standard format of the mystery/ crime procedural, of course. Fidelma and Eadulf observe the crime scene, arrange for an autopsy, interview witnesses, suspects and other persons of interest, gather clues, develop timetables and theories, and so on. What makes the novel particularly interesting to me is the wealth of research into legal and social conventions, monastic life and the variations of Christian doctrine that Tremayne employs in building the background and atmosphere. Details of clothing and patterns of monastic life, differences between Saxon and Irish law, arguments over the correct way to determine the date of the Paschal feast (which the Saxons call Easter after their goddess Oestre), all these things help to make the characters and situations real and interesting.

Of course, as with all historical fiction, Tremayne has made some creative alterations to the bare accounts of the events of the Synod of Whitby. There are no records of an abbess of Kildare named Etain, but then the early records of Kildare are a little sketchy, and Etain, in the novel, had only been abbess nine months before her death. And since Etain dies before the Synod is opened, there would have ben no record of her presence there if she had existed. The death of Archbishop Deusdedit of Canterbury is another bit of creative supposition. One would have expected Deusdedit to speak at the Synod, but he does not appear in the records. He is known to have died around the time of the Synod, probably of plague. It is within the realm of possibility that he did go to Whitby, but fell ill and died without participating.

I enjoyed the short stories I’d read, and I’ve enjoyed reading this novel. I look forward to the rest of the series.

Sarah Pinsker's novella, And Then There Were (N-One), starts out strange, but in a way that grabs and teases and doesn't let go. The conceit is fascinating - in the vastness of the multiverse, the Sarah Pinsker (or at least, one of the Sarah Pinskers) who is a quantologist and who discovered the multiple universes and how to traverse them, holds a conference to which she invites a wide selection of the other Sarah Pinskers.

Who hasn't wondered what their lives might have been like, what they might have been like, if.... So many kinds of if. If they'd made different decisions, if their childhood had been different, if they had been born in a different kind of world. Obviously, Sarah Pinsker has, and she's used that to create a compelling situation for a story, any story. That this story is in fact a murder mystery inspired by the Agatha Christie novel referenced in the title makes it even more strange and compelling.

The novella deftly portrays the confusion of the protagonist - the only Sarah Pinsker at the convention who has any experience in detective work, albeit as an insurance investigator - called upon to unravel the circumstances of the death of one Sarah Pinsker among many. As the mystery unfolds, so do the philosophical questions about responsibility, reality, and 'the road not taken' that fascinate us all.

(Published in Uncanny Magazine March/April 2017. https://uncannymagazine.com/article/and-then-there-were-n-one/)