Too darn hot? Cool down with some re-read favorites

 For Texans, summer is the true cabin-fever time -- too hot to do more than poke a nose outside. (The current outdoor temperature at my city is a mere 97 degrees F, but with heat index indicators – i.e., “feels like temperatures” well in to triple digits.)

No wonder we mostly huddled in air-conditioned bars to watch the FIFA games!

Dawn and dusk are, if anything, more dangerous—swarming with ravenous insects. Inside, there’s only so much streaming we can watch before our brains rot, and we may well be too languid (or cash-strapped) to search for new books.

So what pleasure can we indulge with minimal danger to life, intellect or budget? How about revisiting the pleasures of re-reading? Especially books in series.

I’m currently re-reading one of my favorite series – historian turned fiction writer Sharan Newman’s fiction/mystery series starring 12^th century French nun turned sleuth Catherine LeVendeur.

 If you’re writing pre-modern fiction, it helps to have at least one character who’s literate, with at least some leisure time to track down bad guys, which often means someone connected to the clergy. 

And for my money, preferably one who’s not royal. I’ve found all too often that descriptions of princesses, queens and would-be queens bog down all too often in descriptions of clothes. Not that there’s anything wrong with clothes – Catherine loves them! But a couple of descriptions of, say, a dress with sleeves so long the wearer had to tie them in knots to keep them from trailing on the ground goes a long way.

Though one-off historicals can be intriguing, when I find fascinating characters, I want more, more, more! What’s their next case, where do they live, what do they believe,  what do they eat, who do they love?

I discovered the LeVendeur series decades ago, lost track of it for several years, and returned to find, to my delight, that Newman had added more books in my absence.

And after rooting around in various sources, I found the entire lot at an online source (not the big A!). Every week or so, another couple of volumes arrive on my doorstep. And I scurry back inside, pushing aside other obligations, to return to another time and place.

The series opens with Death Comes as Epiphany, much of which takes place during winter, when ice, snow, and drafty castles sound almost blissful during a Texas heat wave.

***

Death Comes as Epiphany

It’s autumn in the year 1139 A.D., and 18-year-old Catherine LeVendeur is preparing to take her final vows at the Convent of the Paraclete, founded by theologian Peter Abelard and transferred to the direction of his wife (by then a nun), Heloise.

Catherine’s parents thought they had safely disposed of their awkward, intelligent, and argumentative daughter by dedicating her to God. But in a place associated with the brilliant, tragic lovers Abelard and Heloise, can controversy ever be far behind?

Catherine impressed Abbess Heloise with her own iconoclastic intellect. Now, rumors are circulating that a book of psalms prepared by Catherine contains passages of heretical material believed to be inspired by Abelard. Hoping to dispute the rumors, which threaten both the reputation and life of her former lover, Abelard, Heloise charges Catherine with a secret mission: to find and return the problematic book.

Not allowed to explain her apparent expulsion from the convent to her family, Catherine soon finds even more trouble -- the murder of the master sculptor for a new cathedral, whose prime suspect is an enigmatic young Englishman. himself on a secret mission.

With winter’s arrival, problems pile up faster than drifting snow: the second secret family of Catherine’s wealthy merchant father; a prophetic hermit who dabbles in necromancy; a mad monk, and a decidedly unsuitable suitor.

As threats loom against her own life, Catherine struggles to complete the task Heloise imposed on her. But will she only bring more danger to those she loves?

 ***

Can I convert you to a love of a brilliant, tragic era? I've found from looking at reviews that some readers find 12th century France as foreign as the dark side of the moon. But if you enjoyed the Brother Cadfael  mystery series -- or even if you have only vague memories of Ivanhoe, it's the same period. Think knights, peasants, Richard the Lion Heart, Robin Hood, plenty of religious bigotry, and strange medical treatments RFK Jr. would probably love. 

You also don't need to know anything about the tragic love affair between Abelard and Heloise -- the brainy, passionate, doomed "it" couple of their day, but it's worth reading at least a Wikipedia article or two on the subject.

If you have a favorite book series – possibly many of them – please share. We need all the books we can find to survive this Texas summer!

Adventure classics -- A very unmonastic murder

A Morbid Taste for Bones

by Ellis Peters

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“I am firmly resolved never to write an autobiography, and if possible to discourage anyone else from attempting a biography of me,” wrote Ellis Peters in Shropshire: A Memoir of the English Countryside, co-authored with Roy Morgan.

And in fact, who could write the biography of a pseudonymous character? “Ellis Peters” was only the last of the several pseudonyms of historian, translator, and fiction writer Edith Pargeter.

A few online sites fill in details of Pargeter’s early life -- failure to win a place at Oxford following her graduation from Coalbrookdale High School for Girls (she did well in the written English part of the exam, not so well in mathematics); work with a chemist (pharmacist to U.S. readers); and her first serious attempts at writing.

Strangely, most sites omit mention of early books written under pseudonyms -- Peter Benedict, Jolyon Carr, John Redfern -- works of the 1930’s and ’40’s that her first tries at mystery writing, decades before the Ellis Peters series. Was she, even in her twenties, trying to keep her murder stories separate from what she considered more serious historical fiction? Or did she fear the likes of Jolyon Carr’s 1938 Murder in the Dispensary might alarm customers of the chemist’s shop in Dawley High Street?

In today’s Adventure classic selection, A Morbid Taste for Bones, she introduces us to twelfth century Benedictine monk Brother Cadfael busy in his garden, surrounded by plants both useful and, sometimes, poisonous.

Did I say twelfth century? Peters didn’t -- and surely I can’t be the only person not to recall instantly the year the relics of St. Winifred were moved from Wales to the abbey of Saints Peter and Paul (1137 or 1138, take your pick).

Peters’ command of period and setting is so impressive we don’t notice it any more than we notice breathing. Instead, we notice tolerant, worldly wise Brother Cadfael. With a past as a soldier and seafarer with a wife in every port, he’s hardly the everyday medieval monk.

In a scenario reminiscent of modern televangelism, Cadfael’s abbey in Shropshire is looking for the one big thing to garner hordes of pilgrims and hefty financial donations -- the relics of a superstar saint. Two of the abbey’s brothers think they’ve found one in St. Winifred, buried a few miles over the border in Wales. Despite her many attributes -- beauty, virginity, a holy life and miraculous healing -- St. Winifred’s home town has left her bones to molder in a neglected churchyard. Surely, the monks think, she’d be happier at the abbey.

Cadfael isn’t so sure. The people of St. Winifred’s Welsh homeland aren’t taken with the idea, though, and find it even harder to believe when their gentle saint is accused of killing the person who opposes her removal to England.

Without benefit of modern forensics, Cadfael must untangle the facts to find an earthly murderer, as well as abet the happiness of two pairs of lovers. But does the task rest on his shoulders only, or does St. Winifred herself offer aid?

As he reflects afterward: “I do believe I begin to grasp the nature of miracles! . . . Miracles contradict reason, they strike clean across mere human deserts, and deliver and save where they will.”

Look on Amazon for Pargeter/Peters’ Brother Cadfael stories, which she wrote almost until her death in 1995. For a synopsis of her life and work, including pictures as a young woman, I liked Paul Wolfe’s article, “Biography of Edith Pargeter,” at
dawleyheritage.co.uk/.

(Next Wednesday, Adventure classics continues a May of historical fiction with Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago. A little out of the order published in the previews, but there’s a reason.)