Grave Goods, by Ariana Franklin, $25.95. Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, a physician trained at the great medical school in Salerno, Italy, has twice performed great service to Henry II of England during her sojourn in the country, earning from him the title mistress of the art of death. Now he has a third mission for her: Prove that two coffins interred deep in the earth near Glastonbury Abbey are really those of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, so he can quell Welsh hopes that the once and future king will rise again to help them overthrow the throne.
While Adelia has great forensic skills, she knows full well that she doesn’t have the means to prove or disprove the ages of the skeletons, much less their identity. But she travels to Glastonbury with her retinue, the Arab eunuch Mansur (who, because Adelia is a mere woman, must pose as the physician and she his assistant), her young daughter Allie, and the child’s nurse Glytha, only to find it ravaged by a great fire. Further, she learns that she and her companions are in great danger and must flee.
The author excels at creating complex and often contradictory characters, and Adelia accepts the bad as well as the good in people with equanimity. Her life is complicated by an intense love affair with the father of her child, a man who cannot marry her because he was appointed a bishop by King Henry. And Henry is portrayed as an enlightened monarch intent on making great reforms in the justice system, while at the same time often displaying arrogance and indifference toward his subjects.
Franklin’s prose is admirably clear and crisp, as contemporary-sounding to the reader as her characters’ conversations would have sounded to each other, while her attention to historical detail is faultless. And Adelia is a woman to reckon with, always rational (although she does fall under the spell of Glastonbury) and always kind, torn between love and duty, as at ease with royalty as with ruffians, and frequently appalled by what she considers the barbarous ways of the English. This series is for readers who have reservations about most medieval mysteries.
Schemers, by Bill Pronzini, $24.95. How refreshing it is to read a book about book collecting from a writer who truly knows his subject. Pronzini, the author of 35 previous novels and short-story collections featuring the San Francisco private eye who has remained nameless, is also an avid collector of mystery first editions, and he uses his expertise to good advantage in this locked-room puzzle set in the library of a wealthy book collector.
When Gregory Pollexfen files a claim with his insurance company for a cool half-million after reporting that eight of his most valuable mystery first editions have been stolen, Nameless is called in to investigate. Everybody’s first thought is that Pollexfen must be filing a phony claim, but he clearly doesn’t need the money, and his wife and her brother (both of whom he despises) look like possible suspects.
Meanwhile, Nameless’ colleague, Jake Runyon, also a former cop, heads up the coast looking for the deranged stalker of two brothers in an entirely unrelated case. In fact, the book, like most of Pronzini’s, could be called a private eye procedural, as it often focuses on the small, painstaking details of unraveling simultaneous mysteries.
When the locked library also becomes the scene of an apparent homicide, Nameless is stumped until a chance remark by his precocious daughter points the way to the killer. Cleverly plotted, solidly written and authentically researched, it’s another winner from this grandmaster.
About Face, by Donna Leon, $24. Garbage, pollution and other environmental threats form the background to this 18th case for Commissario Guido Brunetti, a compassionate and humane Venetian policeman who frequently locks horns with his corrupt or lazy superiors.
A member of the Carabiniere (the military arm of the police) approaches Brunetti for help in a case involving the illegal hauling of garbage and then turns up murdered, while his own father-in-law wants him to do a background check on a potential business partner. And Brunetti, still happily married, becomes intrigued by the enigmatic wife of the man his father-in-law is dealing with. It’s the usual smooth and sophisticated police procedural we’ve come to expect from this internationally best-selling author.
A good companion piece to it would be Brunetti’s “Venice: Walks With the City’s Best- Loved Detective,” by Toni Sepeda, detailing a dozen walks that armchair travelers — or actual tourists — can take throughout all six regions of Venice and its lagoon, with maps as well as key locations and actual excerpts from the novels themselves to guide them through the churches, restaurants, markets, palazzos and canals referenced in the stories.
Tom and Enid Schantz are freelancers who write regularly about new mystery releases.
