A long time siknce I read this one so it was fairly new again. One of her best - still think "Virgin in the Ice" is IT! - but this one is an absorbing read. I got a little tired of the length she goes with some of the characters, like Mark from the leper colony, and I wanted more of "the leper" (de Massard) himself but that really wasn't possible without wrecking the story. Very good and interesting social insights - as always with Peters - that are still so true today.
If you haven't read any Ellis Peters yet this s a good one to begin with although the first - where Hugh Beringar appears - is also an excellent place to begin. This one is "One Corpse Too Many", very gory and tough, as it was in those times but also very real. the TV version of that one is very good too - with the intelligent Beringar rather than the twerp they used for some of the later ones !!!
Aside - I noticed in someone else's review of this book on Bookshelf they complained about the language being "old-fashioned" ... dhhhhh ??? !!! Is this one of those cases where everyone from whatever century has to speak "like us" today? Ye gods! One of the delights of reading is to meet others who are NOT like one's self, have wider and deeper vocabularies and different ways of being. I think the person was also complaining about Peters' language style too - again, what is so good about the current langauge and vocabulary? Are we incapable of coping with anything that is different from ourselves without getting into a 5-yr-old paddy and worrying about our egos? What do folk read for ?
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