Fidelma is called back from Spain by her brother to help her friend Eadulf, accused of raping and strangling a young novice.

Although I was reading it out of order due to the cliffhanger at the end of the previous novel, it was a while before I really got into this book but once I did I found the mystery intriguing and the events exciting. BUT HOW ARE TWO 7TH CENTURY CHARACTERS ABLE TO QUOTE PETRARCH BY NAME? That totally threw me out of the story and was very disappointing. Knocking a star off for that anachronism. ( )

Tremayne seems to have hit his stride with this tenth installment of the Sister Fidelma series. Brother Eadulf faces the noose for a crime he did not commit and Sister Fidelma must race against the clock to prove his innocence. The red herrings are plentiful here, some more obvious than others. As with Valley of the Shadow, if memory serves, evil is spread far and wide, not just focused on one person. There are helpers, of course, along the way, but sometimes they are a bit too implausible, such as the Apollo-like entrance of the Cashel guards near the end. Where these book still falter for me is the ever-present "court" scene being the centerpiece and method for Fidelma's revelations. I get that she's a dalaigh, but in this particular instance it was particularly frustrating because she does an "almost" reveal in a different location (with an audience far more interesting than the typical peanut gallery), but then no...we have the formal (and formulaic) grandstanding that appears in every novel. I'm just waiting for something more interesting to happen, but I think I will be disappointed.
Outside the Fidelma-a-la-Perry Mason aspect, however, this is probably the strongest book of the first ten in the series. I will say that more recent audiences should be aware that sexual assault plays a very big role in this book, so consider that a content warning. ( )

Excellent book, keeps its suprises to the end.

This book is well written, but I felt a little drier than many I've read. While this suited me at the time, as I didn't want to be too emotionally engaged due to circumstances, it meant that the suspense of the plot didn't come through for me. That said, I enjoyed picking it up, and often returned to it when I otherwise might have finished reading for the day. Certainly held my interest, and I did learn a lot about old Irish laws and traditions.

Would certainly read more books from this author in the future. ( )

What started out as a pretty good read degraded to a mess of red herrings.

I won't discuss the thread of the book other than to say Brother Eadulf is sentenced to death on trumped up charges of murder of a young 12 year old girl. Sister Fidelma rushes to his aid and forestalls the immediate hanging but fails to get an appeal after revealing many irregularities. That was where the book went off the rails for me.

The intertwining of unusual deaths/murders and Brother Eadulf's miraculous escapes from death were bad enough but the end of the book where Sister Fidelma goes into a 20 page rant laying out what really happens and then names the "puppet-master" of the crimes as a person who is barely mentioned in the story made the story very unsatisfying for me.

It is not often that I am disappointed in this series but this book was one of that few. ( )

Ugly times as Fidelma races to save her favorite Saxon from hanging. A petty kingdom's rapid push to the new Roman Church ways is felicitated by a venal abbess and abetted by the local church leaders. Lots of confrontations and difficult situations result as Fidelma gathers the bits and pieces of the various crimes of murder, child slavery, and legal chicanery to identify an unlikely culprit. ( )