A Tapestry of Murders

by Paul Doherty

Paul Doherty is a phenomenally prolific writer. And what's more amazing — whatever he writes, he writes well.
A Tapestry of Murders is part of his series involving the pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (Chaucer himself is there as well, but only on the sidelines, at least in the books I've read to date). Each book is a tale told by one of the pilgrims. Tapestry is told by the Man of Law.
It begins with the death of the Dowager Queen Isabella — widow of Edward II and mother of Edward III — of the pestilence. She died in the castle where she had been, basically, imprisoned by her son.
Some historical background: Isabella was nobody's idea of a saint, although one could argue today that she'd had some provocation … at least for some of her actions. She had a lengthy adulterous affair with Roger Mortimer, but then, her husband was at the time involved in a longstanding affair with Hugh de Spencer. Ultimately Isabella and Mortimer overthrew Edward II and arranged for his murder in a spectacularly grisly fashion. She and Mortimer ruled until Edward III came of age and put an abrupt end to both their rule and their affair: he had Mortimer tried (and gagged throughout the trial) and executed and Isabella sent to Castle Rising under very heavy guard.
In Doherty's story, Isabella's death seems to spawn even more murder and mayhem than she managed in her life. Nicholas Chirke, just starting out on a law career, is brought in to investigate the strange events. His investigations take him into the centre of a scandal that could topple the monarchy — no small matter in an age in which civil war would likely be used to find a new king.
Doherty excels at keeping the reader off-balance; you are never entirely sure who the good guys really are, although you can identify some of the bad guys fairly quickly (the professional assassin Nightshade in this book was pretty obvious in subsequent chapters to anybody who was paying attention to the initial description).
Doherty is also top-notch at blending historical fact with fiction, and at building "might-have-been" stories around his historical facts.
Nor does it hurt that he hints, in each of the books, that there are relationships between various of the pilgrims, without explaining what those relationships are — or were. Some appear to be neutral while others are distinctly hostile. The reader gets the impressions of these through the eyes of other characters, who observe a glance here, a movement there. It's very subtly done. I haven't finished the series — I'm not sure whether Doherty has finished the series, although I hope not — and I am curious to see whether there will be explanations forthcoming about this.