A Trust Betrayed (Margaret Kerr of Perth) Book

Once upon a not so long ago, historical crime novels were a rare breed. In the dizzying profusion of such titles at present (with anywhere from ancient Rome to Renaissance Italy a fit locale for dark deeds and pre-Holmes detectives), a certain panache is needed to make a new entry rise above the crop. Candace Robb has demonstrated in such novels as The Apothecary Rose and The King's Bishop that her Owen Archer mysteries are worthy successors to the groundbreaking medieval novels of Ellis Peters, full of satisfyingly convoluted plotting. A Trust Betrayed inaugurates a new series of mysteries set in Scotland at the time of Robert the Bruce. In the spring of 1297, Margaret Kerr is afraid that her merchant husband Roger has been caught up in the pending rebellion against the English. Her husband's cousin and factor, Jack Sinclair, agrees to try to locate Roger in the dangerous city of Edinburgh. When he is found murdered, Margaret undertakes to solve the mystery herself, but she quickly discovers that Scotland at war is a very dangerous place for a woman alone. Apart from the effortless conjuring up of historical detail (a sine qua non of the genre), Robb is particularly acute at dealing with issues, such as the place of women in this troubled society: without ever making Margaret a proto-feminist, she cannily examines attitudes to gender in the distant past while never forgetting the imperatives of a rattling yarn. --Barry ForshawRead More