"A marvelous addition to Clare's varied repertoire of historical mysteries (The Angel in the Glass, 2018, etc.) introduces two captivating new detectives and features a surprising denouement."
A budding investigative agency takes on a new employee and two thorny cases.
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"As usual, Clare (A Rustle of Silk, 2016, etc.) provides a pleasurable combination of mysticism and historical fact. The secret of that evil object makes this one of her better mysteries."
"Although this series debut would have benefited from more showing and less telling, a thoughtful hero and a likable supporting cast make a promising beginning."
A country physician untangles a web of deadly crime in Jacobean England.
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"The ninth in the Hawkenlye series (The Song of the Nightingale, 2012, etc.) continues the saga with the mixture as before: historical facts, colorful characters, a touch of mysticism and a soupçon of mystery."
"The latest in Clare's Aelf Fen series (The Way Between the Worlds, 2012, etc.) is one of her best, charmingly combining romance, mystery and mysticism.
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Murderous attacks in England's Fen country call for every skill an apprentice healer can conjure up.
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"Clare's Aelf Fen series (Mist Over the Water, 2009, etc.) offers a charming combination of the mysterious and mystical; the third volume continues in the same vein."
Apprentice healer Lassair, who lives in the small Fenland village of Aelf Fen, makes a visit to her grandmother's grave and is presented with yet another mystery.
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"The second in the Aelf Fen series (Out of the Dawn Light, 2009) is a worthy continuation of the entrancing story of Lassair, whose talents are both practical and mystical."
A young medieval healer becomes involved in a dangerous political scheme.
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"A treat that's full of the mysticism, period detail and mystery Clare's readers have come to expect."
Historical specialist Clare (The Joys of My Life, 2009, etc.) begins her new series in 1087, when William Rufus has just assumed the throne of England and quelled a rebellion.
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"Adroitly weaving medieval history into a rousing and mystical tale, the latest in the Hawkenlye series (The Enchanter's Forest, 2008, etc.) may be Clare's best yet."
Abbess Helewise of Hawkenlye and her friend Sir Josse d'Acquin are caught up in a dangerous game of cat and mouse.
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"La belle dame sans merci meets 1990s New Age feminism: an awkwardly uncertain romance."
In his third adventure (Ashes of the Elements, 2001, etc.), Josse D'Aquin, king's man and knight, returns home from a cold, hard trip to find that a man has died at the local tavern. The wolf's bane Josse discovers in the leftovers is not one of Goody Anne's usual seasonings. But why would someone deliberately poison a poor and harmless farmer like Peter Ely? The only clue is that a handsome nobleman ate a bit of the same dish at the same time as poor Peter. After consulting with his usual partner in these investigations, Abbess Helewise, who's laid low by a fever, Josse sets off on the nobleman's trail. His rewards for this sleuthing are a concussion and a mysterious encounter with a smart little boy and a beautiful young woman, apparently hiding from the same mysterious nobleman. Then the nobleman appears at Hawkenlye Abbey and introduces himself to Helewise as Denys de Courtenay, searching for his recently widowed and distraught cousin Joanna and her son. The Abbess instinctively distrusts the oily Denys, and Josse, chivalrous and smitten, rushes back to her hideout to protect her. At length, he manages to do considerably more than that, and the determined Joanna uses him to create a new life for herself and her son.
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What are frustrated Queen Mother Eleanor and concerned merchants to do about King Richard the Lionheart, who has abandoned his duties and in effect absconded with England's wealth to support his crusading? The pervasive gossip about crass sales of manors and offices makes Richard I a model for his many subjects who also lust after what isn't rightfully theirs. Abbess Helewise (Fortune Like the Moon, 2000) actually stumbles over one of them, a poacher whose body lies on the verge of woods fringing her abbey. The flint spearhead that killed Hamm Robinson hints that the mythical Forest People might have come to life and taken revenge on this treasure-hunting tree-killer. Lazy Sheriff Pelham is content with a supernatural explanation, but Helewise can't resist investigating a murder so close to home. Even though she's preoccupied with novice Caliste, a sleepwalker responding to the call of the forest, and with lay servant Esyllt, who also periodically disappears into the woods, she teams up with her worldly partner, king's man Josse d'Acquin, who spends his first night in the wilderness witnessing another strange murder (and even stranger events) and his second night snuggling with Helewise. The demise of a third victim leads to a logical but fantastic solution.
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Clare launches her new series in 1189, when Henry II of England has died from an anal fistula and his contentious queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, at large for the first time in 15 years, schemes to win acceptance for her favorite son, the foreign Richard Plantagenet, as king. Before he arrives from Poitiers, Eleanor, gambling on a p.r. move in his name, empties England's prisons. Immediately, a nun from the abbey of Hawkenlye meets a brutal death, and Richard's childhood friend, soldier of fortune Josse d'Acquin, is dispatched to handle the situation and salvage Richard's name—a task more and more complicated by what he learns from Helewise, the sharp Abbess of Hawkenlye. Evidently the victim, Gunnora of Winnowlands, was anything but a model novice, and she entered the convent under passing strange circumstances. Like Josse, the prose proceeds so overcarefully through the first half that little flaws in language and logic (abbess candidates are `short-listed` and discuss a `case of delayed shock`) stick out incongruously as Clare traces the tangled web linking Gunnora's kin to a family with adjoining lands and a series of more deliberate (and welcome) shocks. Queen Eleanor reappears, more vital than Richard, to set up the series, establishing Josse as future `king's man` for her famously absent son; and even the late Gunnora returns to life.
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