Skip to main content

Face Down Upon an Herbal

Originally published in June 2004, on my original 52 Books blog.

I went to explore the new location of my favourite second-hand bookshop (which I approve of, although some of the mystery is gone - along with the mustiness) and came home with this book. It’s the second in a series, with all the books titled Face Down “something” .

Author: Kathy Lynn Emerson
Year published: 1998
Genre: Mystery
Sub-genre(s): Historical
Where got: Second-hand book store

The story:
Susanna, Lady Appleton, is sent to Madderly Castle, ostensibly to help Lady Madderly finish a book on herbology, but in reality to provide an excuse for her husband, Robert, to come there to investigate the murder of a man who was apparently involved in a conspiracy against Queen Elizabeth I. Shortly after arriving, the body count starts to mount and Susanna’s young protége, Catherine, falls in love with of one of the prime suspects. Solving the crimes takes the combined efforts of Susanna, Catherine, Robert and a couple of other people working together.

Technique and plot:
I have to admit that I have yet to come across a historical mystery series that equals Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael series, but this will do nicely.

This is a cleverly set up murder mystery that relies upon the premise so favoured by Agatha Christie and many other Golden Era mystery authors: all the primary suspects being still present at the scene of the crime when the investigation takes place. It takes the investigators almost the whole book to discover whether the murders were politically motivated or not, the first victim having been suspected of treason and the murderer possibly an accomplice. An experienced reader of mysteries will have guessed the killer’s identity before too many chapters, but will still be kept in doubt as to the motive and correctness of the guess nearly until the end. The inclusion of a romance is a nice touch, especially as the reader is given ample reason to believe that the man Catherine falls in love with might be the killer. Emerson does not fall into the trap some mystery authors are wont to, namely to make the reader dislike the killer (one of the few things I don’t like about The Cat Who series).

The narrative contains some unnecessary but mouth-watering descriptions of food and likewise unnecessarily detailed descriptions of herbal remedies. Being that so much is made of the fact that Lady Appleton is a herbalist and an expert on poisons, I expected this expertise of hers to be in some way related to the investigation, but it was merely used as a device to bring her to the murder scene.

This is quite an interesting mystery - Emerson has found a niche in the mystery market by choosing a era not many mystery authors seem interested in. The language seems genuine enough, with a suitable sprinkling of archaisms and old-fashioned word order, which unfortunately sometimes leaks out into the narrative.

Rating:
An interesting mystery that will keep fans of historical mysteries occupied for an afternoon. 3 stars.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down
Post a Comment
Read more

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went and
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove
Post a Comment
Read more