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The Chronicles of Brother Hermitage #18
The 1066 via Derby
The Normans are in town; beware, be careful or be dead…
From multiple Best Selling author Howard of Warwick comes more medieval mystery, but not as we know it.
First there was medieval fiction, then there was the medieval detective, now the whole business has simply got ridiculous.
And Howard of Warwick must be held to account. Medieval crime comedy didn’t even exist until he started interfering...
An old wise woman of Derby is dead, and Brother Hermitage has been asked to deal with her.
Which means she must have been murdered; people only die of murder when Brother Hermitage is in town.
And if she was murdered, who on earth would do that to an old wise woman in her own hovel, for goodness sake?
The Norman soldiers camping just down the road? Quite likely.
The local people who seem to have good reason to hate her? Quite possibly.
Anyone who wanted to steal her ill-gotten gains? Quite feasibly.
Very well, quite a few people would want to kill an old wise woman in her own hovel, Brother Hermitage just has to work out which one. Can’t be hard, surely?
But this is Brother Hermitage, and the characters of Derby are being less than helpful - as well as pretty peculiar.
In The 1066 via Derby Brother Hermitage is once more disappointed by the moral standards of the average 11th Century killer.
Stumbling through a host of conclusions, one of which must be right, surely, and a small host of extra murders just for completeness, Hermitage uncovers crime of a truly despicable nature.
The guilty must face the consequences of their actions and pay the price - but that’s someone else’s business, Hermitage only does investigation.
From multiple Best Selling author Howard of Warwick comes more medieval mystery, but not as we know it.
First there was medieval fiction, then there was the medieval detective, now the whole business has simply got ridiculous.
And Howard of Warwick must be held to account. Medieval crime comedy didn’t even exist until he started interfering...
An old wise woman of Derby is dead, and Brother Hermitage has been asked to deal with her.
Which means she must have been murdered; people only die of murder when Brother Hermitage is in town.
And if she was murdered, who on earth would do that to an old wise woman in her own hovel, for goodness sake?
The Norman soldiers camping just down the road? Quite likely.
The local people who seem to have good reason to hate her? Quite possibly.
Anyone who wanted to steal her ill-gotten gains? Quite feasibly.
Very well, quite a few people would want to kill an old wise woman in her own hovel, Brother Hermitage just has to work out which one. Can’t be hard, surely?
But this is Brother Hermitage, and the characters of Derby are being less than helpful - as well as pretty peculiar.
In The 1066 via Derby Brother Hermitage is once more disappointed by the moral standards of the average 11th Century killer.
Stumbling through a host of conclusions, one of which must be right, surely, and a small host of extra murders just for completeness, Hermitage uncovers crime of a truly despicable nature.
The guilty must face the consequences of their actions and pay the price - but that’s someone else’s business, Hermitage only does investigation.
- GenresMystery
304 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 27, 2020
49 people are currently reading
23 people want to read
About the author
Howard of Warwick
52 books89 followersHoward of Warwick is but a humble chronicler with the blind luck to stumble upon manuscripts which describe the goings-on of Brother Hermitage and his companion Wat the weaver.
His work has been heard, seen and read, most of it accompanied by laughter and some of it by money. His peers have even seen fit to recognize his unworthy efforts with a prize for making up stories.
There are now eighteen - make that twenty - novels of Brother Hermitage, the most medieval of detectives, loose on the world and they have found considerable success with the buying public.
The most recent outpouring from the scriptorium is The King's Investigator Part II.
Tales of Hermitage continue to flow forth with few checks for accuracy. There are even short stories available for free.
There is a dedicated web page, HowardofWarwick.com.
Messages can be left care of Howard@howardofwarwick.com and Howardofwarwick can be followed on Twitter
There is even tweeting @HowardofWarwick
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 11, 2022
I thouht I'd guessed the murderer on page 94, but I was, as I have been in most of this series, wrong.
To put this in cntext, I'm not very good at solving mysteries. Episodes of 'Columbo' just confuse me, and when Petrocelli was giving his alternative explanations of the evidence to a jury, I'd forgotten the original case. The less said about 'Murder, She Wrote', the better.
Anyway, this one is more mystery than humour, as the last five or six have been, but it would be difficult for anyone to sustain the number of jokes that appeared in, say, The Garderobe of Death. There is a lot of trapesing about medieval Derby, but in the end Brother Hermitage comes to a reasonable, but unsatisfying, conclusion that brought Murder on the Orient Express ro mind. How this could be done in a setting that way predates steam trains is one of the more interesting aspects of the story.
To put this in cntext, I'm not very good at solving mysteries. Episodes of 'Columbo' just confuse me, and when Petrocelli was giving his alternative explanations of the evidence to a jury, I'd forgotten the original case. The less said about 'Murder, She Wrote', the better.
Anyway, this one is more mystery than humour, as the last five or six have been, but it would be difficult for anyone to sustain the number of jokes that appeared in, say, The Garderobe of Death. There is a lot of trapesing about medieval Derby, but in the end Brother Hermitage comes to a reasonable, but unsatisfying, conclusion that brought Murder on the Orient Express ro mind. How this could be done in a setting that way predates steam trains is one of the more interesting aspects of the story.
May 30, 2020
A confused triumph
Money is the name of the game in this book. Murders, mayhem, Normans ( which is redundant, I apologize) and the questionable people of Derby coming together to give Hermitage, Wat and Cwen a mystery to solve before it’s too late for the town’s ignominious headman truly buys it. Funnier than normal, The 1066 via Derby keeps Middle Aged England awake awhile longer until the Plantagenet clan arrives.
Money is the name of the game in this book. Murders, mayhem, Normans ( which is redundant, I apologize) and the questionable people of Derby coming together to give Hermitage, Wat and Cwen a mystery to solve before it’s too late for the town’s ignominious headman truly buys it. Funnier than normal, The 1066 via Derby keeps Middle Aged England awake awhile longer until the Plantagenet clan arrives.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews