Great Revolt, The

London, June 1381. If you know your history, you’ll know that this wasn’t the place to be. The Great Uprising, otherwise known as The Peasants’ Revolt, has finally started but while Brother Athelstan fears for his friends and parishioners, some of whom are well-established members of the Upright Men, the force behind the rebellion, he finds himself called to Blackfriars by his religious order. A delegation has arrived from the Pope to investigate a request from King Richard II – the sanctification of Richard’s ancestor, Edward II – a divisive King, at best.

No sooner has he arrived, however, and the leader of the delegation is found stabbed to death. Despite being a strong individual, he appeared not to defend himself from the attack. Oh, and his chamber was about as locked as it could possibly be. Of course.

As the city descends into chaos, Athelstan finds himself the target of a ruthless murderer. But he has more to resolve than just the murder(s). In the midst of the carnage, it seems that his parishioners have disappeared into thin air…

The fifteenth outing for Brother Athelstan and John Cranston and the Great Revolt is finally here. Since Athelstan’s return from his eight year hiatus in Bloodstone, the threat of the Upright Men has been growing and growing, and the Revolt is finally here in all its bloody glory. I’ve always praised Paul’s ability to bringing the medieval world to vivid life. I defy anyone to top the sequence from the second chapter of the book as Athelstan and Cranston make their way from Blackfriars to St Erconwald’s. I’m writing this review about a week after finishing the book and some of the imagery is still with me.

There’s little to say about Paul’s books that I haven’t said before, and regular readers know that how this review is going to go. It’s a near-perfect meld of classic impossible crime and the historical genre. To be fair, there’s a little more of the historical events this time – understandably, of course – as we see a number of the major beats in the events in London, admittedly with Cranston taking a fairly major role in proceedings, but the mystery is never neglected. The locked room idea is hardly original, although the reason for the lack of defensive wounds is rather wonderful and certainly something I haven’t seen before.

My only worry? That now the Revolt is here, that the little monk – sorry, friar will disappear from our pages again. Let’s hope not, but even if he does, Doherty’s other stalwart, Sir Hugh Corbett, is back from his six year holiday in The Dark Serpent, which… oh, I’ll tell you about that when it comes out. In the meantime, this one is, obviously, Highly Recommended.

King Richard II of England petitions the Pope to beatify and canonized his great grandfather, Edward II, who was murdered 54 years before. One of the Dominican friars that was gathering information for the petition is murdered. Brother Athelstan is tasked with solving the murder. With the Peasants Revolt against the King making London a slaughterhouse, a greater mystery involving Edward II’s death is revealed. The pace of this story is a bit slow in the first half, but picks up briskly for the remainder. Although I never quite connected with our Brother protagonist, I found the story enjoyable, nicely grounded in history, and full of delicious description of medieval mayhem.