Product Description

1284 and Edward I is battling a traitorous movement founded by the late Simon de Montfort, the rebel who lost his life at the Battle of Evesham in 1258. The Pentangle, the movement’s underground society whose members are known to practice the black arts, is thought to be behind the apparent suicide of Lawrence Duket, one of the King’s loyal subjects, in revenge for Duket’s murder of one of their supporters. The King, deeply suspicious of the affair, orders his wily Chancellor, Burnell, to look into the matter. Burnell chooses a sharp and clever clerk from the Court of King’s Bench, Hugh Corbett, to conduct the investigation. Corbett – together with his manservant, Ranulf, late of Newgate – is swiftly drawn into the tangled politics and dark and dangerous underworld of medieval London.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #108183 in Books
• Published on: 1990-09-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

About the Author
Paul Doherty was born in Middlesbrough. He studied History at Liverpool and Oxford Universities and obtained a doctorate for his thesis on Edward II and Queen Isabella. He is now headmaster of a school in north-east London and lives with his family in Essex.

Customer Reviews

Pleasing debut for Hugh Corbett
Hugh Corbett has become P.C Doherty's most durable central character (closely followed by Athelstan), and it's easy to see why from this opening adventure for the clerk-cum-sleuth. Doherty has a gift for bringing distant ages alive and for populating his books with endearing, believable characters and this quality is displayed here as Corbett and his assistant Ranulf are introduced to the world. Corbett is invited, by the powers that be, to solve the seemingly mundane murder of a Lawrence Duket in the London church of St.Mary Le Bow but he soon discovers dark undercurrents which could threaten the King himself... Corbett is a sympathetic character with a tragic past and the reader soon has a degree of empathy with him. Ranulf is the familiar Doherty rogue ( Jankyn, Shallot etc) but the two work well together. The plot itself is typical Doherty too...dark and mysterious deeds in the backstreets of medieval London, but all these stories manage to retain an individuality that keeps the reader coming back for more ! Highly recommended !

Good premise, bad plot, ugly execution
I have to say that I was keen to read a medieval mystery and was encouraged by the long series of Paul Doherty's books - so I decided to give the first in the Hugh Corbett character range a try.

I have to say that this is Paul's first book in this series and there may have been teething problems - but unfortunately too many for me to return back to them.

The premise of the story is good - an apparent suicide to be investigated, the church, devil worship, a secret sect, conspiracy and treason against the King. The problems begin as the actual plot of the story pans out. It is very very disjointed. We have a LOT of emphasis on the historically accurate backdrops (places, streets, clothes, food) and a very rushed story with the characters - using many random cliché's such as relaying to the reader that the main character has discovered something integral to the plot but not actually revealing what this is for another few pages...why? It only serves to annoy not to encourage reading - especially in such contrived scenes that basically did not leave any room for guess work - I had the main villain (easily, folks) figured out by chapter 4 and the author does not reveal this revelation until the end (of course) in an embarrassing build up.

I also felt the actual execution of the novel was extremely poor. On one page alone the character had moved to around 3 different places in London and the author tried to cram in a series of events that occurred in each. It was like watching a film on fast forward.

The characters had potential but again their development was rushed, and where you were given a background to induce some kind of empathy this was lost really as the book delved into another "well researched" historical tangent.

It is clear that Paul Doherty is a researcher in this field and has a definite passion for it - he even added an authors note at the end saying that "some of the characters actually existed" - wow, I only hope their true story was better executed than this.

Satanism in Medieval London

This is the first book in the series of medieval mysteries featuring Sir Hugh Corbett. Obviously this is one of Paul Doherty's earlier offerings and he has since written many more books and is now an established author of medieval novels and has also added a number of novels on Egypt to his ever growing list of titles. Having said that it is one of his earlier offerings does not mean that it is inferior to his current books, quite the opposite. The Hugh Corbett mysteries were and are extremely popular and Paul Doherty is still adding to them.

Lawrence Duket, a goldsmith murders a moneylender called Crepyn and then flees to find sanctuary in the church of St. Mary Le Bow. Duket is found hanged inside the church the following day, but the church is locked up, so surely the goldsmith must have taken his own life. The Chancellor of King Edward I, Bishop Burnell, assigns Hugh Corbett to investigate.

Corbett is threatened and attacked while probing into the so called suicide. Things are obviously not as they seem. The hanging only masks a trail of treason, sorcery and rebellion. Corbett find that a Satanist cult are using the Mitre tavern a place owned by the lovely Alice atte Bowe. A beautiful and welcome distraction for Corbett.