The Merchant's Partner (Medieval West Country Series #2) Book

The second in a series of murder mysteries set in medieval England, starring Sir Baldwin Furnshill, a knight with a deadly secret (he was once a Knight Templar; since that sect has been officially disbanded and accused of worshipping Satan, he could be executed if anyone suspects him of involvement), and his friend Simon Puttock, the bailiff of a local castle.

One winter morning, an old woman named Agnes is found dead in a field, her body mutilated. It quickly turns out that most of the villagers suspected her of being a witch, which means that practically everyone had a potential motive for the murder. One young man, who visited Agnes the day before her death for medical advice, seems to be the most likely suspect, but there's more going on than Baldwin and Simon know, particularly once a second murder occurs.

This book is so bad. SO BAD, you guys. The narration switches between Baldwin and Simon, but since they are both are one-dimensional characters with no personality beyond "clever, honorable, strong detective", I never could remember which one's POV I was in, and often had to flip back and forth between pages just to figure out which of the two I was supposed to be reading. The solution to the mystery becomes obvious to the reader long, long before the characters figure it out, so it's just a matter of dully watching while they plod from clue to clue. The femme fatale who's eventually revealed to be behind it all is a misogynist cliche of a character, so over-the-top evil with her feminine wiles that it's hard not to laugh at every one of her supposedly 'seductive' lines of dialogue.

But I think the thing that bothered me the most is the utter trash that is the historical research. Jecks clearly has read a few books about medieval England (if you need to know the architectural layout, room by room, of a peasant's hovel, he will happily spend several pages describing it for you), but there's no sense that the characters actually live in, or are shaped by, a world different from our modern one. For example: the village the story is set in is so small that it doesn't have its own church or market, but it does have an inn and tavern. Why would there be enough travelers to keep an inn running? Who are these travelers supposed to be, and why on earth would they be coming to this place if there's nothing there? Travel is a major project at this time; no one is just sloping off to various small towns to check them out! Jecks also can't seem to keep straight how constrained or free his female characters are allowed to be; the societal rules women operate under change from scene to scene.

Most strikingly, this is a bizarrely secular Middle Ages. The events of the book seem to take place over two weeks at least and yet not one character ever goes to church or worries about missing it. It's fine to have individual characters who are skeptical, but the calendar and rituals of Catholicism would still structure their public lives; they can't just be unaware of it. Similarly, the book takes place in February, suggesting at least part of it should occur during Lent, but again there's no mention of it or the changes in diet and behavior you'd expect to follow.

In short: do not read.