A Bone of Contention by Susanna Gregory Review
A Bone of Contention by Susanna Gregory
St. Martin's Press, 1997.Hardback, 375 pages.
ISBN: 031216792X.
Ordering information:
Amazon.com.
A Bone of Contention is Susannah Gregory's second
mystery novel that features that amiable, scientific
genius, Matthew Bartholomew, as the chief investigator
of medieval mischief in and around the venerable university
town of Cambridge, England. One could find no author better
qualified to guide through the narrow back streets and
fetid fens of fourteenth century England than Ms. Gregory,
who in real life has been a police officer, writer of
scholarly books on medieval houses, castles and history and
who currently lives near the university. In addition our
author has earned a Ph.D. from Cambridge and has worked as
a research fellow there. One feels compelled to add that Susannah Gregory is a nom de plume of this fascinating writer.
An added bonus of this book is that this author tells her tale
in well written prose that moves along at a good pace but
pauses along the way to point out interesting details of
the period that entertain and enlighten.
Armed with all this fascinating dossier, the reader can trustfully follow this guide into an eye opening tour of the medieval mind as it tries to bring reason and logic to bear on crimes committed in a landscape that ranges from the magnificent to the putrid. Ms. Gregory creates a protagonist who is so far ahead of his contemporaries that he fails to see any use in doing star charts for his patients, and who also is so literal in his scientific cast of mind that he fails to foresee any difficulties that might arise from inviting both an eligible young lady and a well known harlot as his dinner guests at the college festival. The good doctor's friend and colleague is the sagacious, and faithful Brother Michael who, although totally unencumbered with 20th century standards of personal hygiene and healthful eating, is always there to bring the puzzled physician's reasoning down to a more pragmatic level. These two sincere but often puzzled detectives living at the dawn of forensic science become increasingly more attractive to the reader as the plot evolves, and the final solution shows the reader a fascinating example of criminal psychosis as it plays itself out in the Age of Faith. You will understand the fourteenth century mind far more when you have read this book, and you will also have enjoyed a very good mystery.
--Sarah Reaves White
Return to the October 1998 issue of The IWJ.
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