Customer Reviews
Another cracker - By: Dodster, 08 Oct 2008 
This is the 13thin the series. Matthew & Brother Michael continue their crime solving escapades. This time a charlatan 'healer' comes into town & performs some wonderful 'miracles', managing to turn the town against its traditional practitioners, including Matthew Bartholomew & creates self doubtin Bartholomew.
Simultaneously, a leading medical practioner is murdered, their are tensionsin town over a rent war, with landlords wanting to charge the university more & the university unwilling to pay. An elderly scholar dies. A note claims it was murder. Bartholomew claims it was natural. Could he be wrong?
This really is an excellent series. By now Matthew, Brother Michael & the rest of the characters are like old friends but there are still enough surprises to keep the reader's interest.
If you have enjoyed the series so far, I don't think this will disappoint. If you are new, each novel is stand alone but does refer back to previous episodes. You have to start somewhere!
Now if only Matilde came back...
More Laurel and Hardy than Dalziel and Pascoe - By: L. Murphy, 24 Sep 2008 
I wonder why I persevere with this series, this is the 12th I have read & since the first 4 or five they have been generally disappointing & repetitive. Brother Michael & Matthew Bartholomew are not the Holmes & Watson of 14th Century crime detection, not even the Dalziel & Pascoe, probably more like the Laurel & Hardy.
The problem is that while Susanna Gregory knows her history, she has little or no idea how to construct a detective novel. Our heroes keep stumbling & bumbling about accusing everyonein sight of the crime with frequent visits to eating establishments to satisfy Michael's voracious appetite.
The squalor, lack of hygiene, Brother William's 'filthy grey habit' & the antics of the incorrigible Deynman get their umpteenth mention, 'Town & Gown' have their usual squabbles but it is not enough, not anymore, to sustain interest.
I am not sure that Ms Gregory, until the last few pages, has any more idea than the reader who is going to be denounced as the killer as the denouement of the last three or four books have been quite ludicrous.
