St. Peter's Fair
Another tricky case for the illustrious Brother Cadfael
It is July, in the year of our Lord 1139, and merchants from England and Wales flock to Shrewsbury for the famous fair held annually by the Abbey and patronized by King Stephen himself. However, on the eve of the feast of St. Peter, the preparations are disrupted by the representatives of the guilds with the mayor at their head.
The town is in a dismal state after last year's siege, so they are asking the monastery to provide a tenth of the proceeds from the stall rentals to repair the broken streets. The disagreement escalates when the mayor's son Philip goes to deal directly with the market and a fight ensues.
Thomas, a Bristol merchant, delivers a single humiliating blow to Philip and the young man vows revenge. When Master Thomas is murdered in the night, few doubt the killer. Brother Cadfael, however, is suspicious of the whole situation and, with the help of Thomas' niece Emma, sets out to investigate. When a second murder occurs, Cadfael begins to suspect that more than a share of the fairground tax is at stake. Maybe even the royal throne itself...
Ellis Peters
Ellis Peters, by her own name Edith Mary Pargeter (1913-1995), was an English writer of Welsh descent whose work includes mainly war, historical and detective fiction. She was also closely connected with Czech and Slovak culture, fell in love with Prague and as a Bohemian translated into English a number of books by renowned authors such as Jan Neruda and Bohumil Hrabal. She made her mark on world literature with the Tree of Heaven trilogy, as well as a twenty-volume series of historical mysteries featuring her brother Cadfael, set in twelfth-century Civil War England, and the thirteen-volume cases of Inspector Fels and his son. Virtually her entire life - with a few exceptions, such as a brief stay in Prague - was spent in her native county of Shropshire. Here she also died at the age of eighty-two.
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| Code: | AK1I010 |