An Excellent Mystery (Brother Cadfael #11)

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Title: An Excellent Mystery

Series: Brother Cadfael #11

Author: Ellis Peters

Rating: 3 of 5 Stars

Genre: Mystery

Pages: 253

Format: Kindle Digital Edition

 

Synopsis:

A wounded Crusader has become a monk who has been befriended by a mute young monk. In the power plays between the royalty, an abbey is destroyed and the monks therein scatter.

The aforementioned Crusader makes his way to Shrewsbury, where it is found out that the young woman he was to marry but forswore to become a monk, went to become a nun. Only she never arrived at the Abbey. Now a young man who was with the Crusader monk must track her down to press his own suit for her hand, if she is alive. If she is dead, then he’ll pursue vengeance.

Caught in the middle of it all, is Cadfael. Seeing more than others, caring for all, trying to make everything work out without destroying a man, a name, a legacy or a young woman.

 

My Thoughts:  Spoilers

If you aren’t as dull as dullard, you’ll have figured out what is going on at probably about the same time as Cadfael. If you are that dull, here’s a Pro Tip: young women can disguise themselves as boys.

And honestly, that is what made me shake my head over and over.  How does a woman disguise herself so thoroughly that nobody in a bloody Abby discovers it? She has to bathe sometime. She has to have her period sometime. It gets hot in the summer and she can’t wear the monk’s habit ALL the time. I get that a young woman can pass as a young man for a time, among strangers. But among a cloistered community? It just beggared my belief.

Apart from that, this was a half decent Cadfael story. He actually plays a rather small part. There is also a lot of “Historicalness” going on and those goings ons are what actually drive the story. Kind of like getting a history lesson on the sly.