Paris
1393: Young widow Christine de Pizan works as a scribe at
the palace to support her mother and three children. The king
has spells of lunacy and everybody is trying to find a cure,
many of which sound more like magic than medicine. A man bringing
a mysterious book to the palace is found murdered and it is
Christine who discovers his hidden body. Then the popular
Hugues de Precy is found dead beside his wife Alix and everybody
thinks that she has done the deed, but Christine discovers
otherwise and must turn sleuth to prevent more deaths.
This is a debut for both the sleuth and the author and introduces
the real-life character of the author and proto-feminist Christine
de Pizan. Used to the grandeur and scheming of palace life
but fallen on harder times since the death of her beloved
husband, she is an ideal person to introduce us to an unfamiliar
setting. The author paints a picture of a place where nobody
is above suspicion and where the slightest thing can topple
a person from favor and into the dungeons. Medicine is a discipline
in its infancy and anybody brewing a potion treads a fine
line between witchcraft and science. Christine must prove
her friend innocent, keep her own head on her shoulders, protect
and feed her family and forge a career as a woman in a man’s
world. Fictional happenings are woven through historical ones
and the whole makes for a compelling foray into a place and
time not covered by many other novels, particularly historical
mysteries. If Christine has another adventure I would like
there to be less of an emphasis on her own ménage,
of which we get to read rather a lot. The actual sleuthing
starts comparatively late in the book and I wanted to read
more about this and less about her superstitious mother and
what the family is having to eat for dinner. This aside, it
will be interesting to see how this historical figure’s
life is woven into whatever adventures she faces in subsequent
novels.
|