Reviews for The Death Ship of Dartmouth (Medieval West Country Series #21)

The average rating for The Death Ship of Dartmouth (Medieval West Country Series #21) based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-09-24 00:00:00 Enry Bianca This later book in the series deals with the pair of Baldwin and Puttock in the port city of Dartmouth. Here they deal with powerful merchants, powerful knights, the shadow of the Despenser, an abjuring criminal, a ghost ship, a French knight fleeing to France, the threat of war, and of course murder. Which is a lot to put in a book, but Jecks manages it. The most interesting part of each of these is how exactly he's going to manage to get his characters involved, since they're not really from this area nor have any reason to be part of it. But he does so deftly and reasonably, plus introduces coroner Richard DeWells, one of my favorite characters in the series. But the problem is that there's so much going on, with so many interweaving storylines and characters that you rarely get to actually read about Baldwin (allegedly the main character) and Puttuck. Almost the entire book is various sailors, merchants, shop owners, wives, and so on with their sub plots which barely connect to the main story. So much so that the book kind of bogs down and loses its way, almost as if the author got so enamored of all these other characters he forgot what he was doing. Unfortunately you see this a lot with successful series, the author gets more carried away with stuff they are interested in and less reined in by the needs of the story and editorial input, so the books get longer and longer and more meandering. Its still a decent story with nice characterization and interplay but not as tight or well-told as others in the series.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-01-24 00:00:00 Anthony Angel My twenty first book in the series, and this was a delight for me. I enjoyed the setting, especially since it involved poring over some very old maps, and I loved the characters. Especially the Coroner, Sir Richard de Welles, who is based upon James Robertson Justice and Brian Blessed. I actually laughed as I wrote him, he was such a delight to conceive and flesh out. And then, when it was all done, this was shortlisted for the Theakstone's prize for the best crime novel of the year. I was pipped at the post, but the book has always appealed, and to be voted as one of the six best novels of the year is pretty good!