One suspects the heavy axe of an editor has been at work here to condense and commercialize what was probably once a bloodier, scarier, and less broadly accessible novel. This seemed promising but likely to be a difficult conceit to carry throughout, and indeed the narrative soon assumes the more usual third person singular, only to return to the curious “we” form at the end. From down the road we can hear harnesses jingling and see dust rising into the warm spring sky”. Mistress of the Art of Death starts with a curious sort of “over the shoulder” first person plural: “Here they come. It is disappointing that Franklin did not acknowledge in the afterword, and odd that most reviewers have not noted, that the protagonist was based on the character of an historical author and scholar. Trotula of Salerno was the reputed author of an authoritative text on women’s medicine, the Diseases of Women ( Passionibus Mulierum Curandorum), also known as the Trotula Major. Nor would the term “doctor” have been used at that time for a physician or surgeon. The town itself wasn’t known as “Cambridge” until hundreds of years after the time depicted. The recreation of medieval life is serviceable, but as the author notes in an afterword there are a number of anachronisms. She must gain the trust of the local people while investigating the awful murders and fending off the mostly unwelcome attentions of the local knights and crusaders. This is an earlier Cambridge, a prosperous merchant town with a small port, several Roman roads, a native wool industry and a Jewish quarter.Īdelia and her companions must redeem the Jews of Cambridge, who are interned in the local Royal Castle while under suspicion of murder and child crucifixion. This is not the Cambridge of the eponymous University.

Trotula”, a physician and “doctor to the dead” from Salerno in the Kingdom of Sicily.Īdelia and her companions, Simon, a Jewish Italian “fixer” and Mansur, an Algerian eunuch, are sent on a mission by the King of Sicily to the aid of the Jews of Cambridge.

The protagonist is one Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar or “Dr. Putnam, 2007) is an engrossing yarn of skullduggery and forensic pathology in 12th-Century Cambridge, England. Murder and Mystery in Medieval Cambridge: Mistress of the Art of Death Murder and Mystery in Medieval Cambridge:

Mistress of the art of death