Each of Margaret Fraser's masterly books has a different focus, which is a fun way of learning about the Middle Ages. In this one, she shows how a member of the small but growing middle class lived in a world between the more usually portrayed peasantry and the nobility. As usual, it starts off in a fairly "cozy" vein, but soon gathers momentum and ends up being anything but, thus possibly pleasing a whole ranges of tastes. In Frazer's early books, the crime and the background get equal billing, which makes for a fine and balanced work of fiction. This is miles away from the genre's perhaps more usual swings, to either mystery but little history, or the other way about. Again, this is not a "puzzle" whodunit in the classic style, but a meticulous recreation of not only how people lived more than five hundred years ago, but how they loved, suffered and sinned. Just the thing for anybody who usually disparages the genre to show how well it can be done, in the right hands.