Customer Reviews
Third Book in a Wonderful Series - By: J. Chippindale, 08 Dec 2006 
This is the thirdin a series of books that are growingin popularity. Written by Simon Beaufort & if you think the books are well written & well researched, you would be correct. Because Simon Beaufort is a pseudonym of Susanna Gregory, perhaps better known for the series of books featuring Matthew Bartholomew. I have never read a badly written or boring book by Susanna Gregory & I am sure this series will be just as good.
The year is 1070 & Sir Geoffrey Mappestone & his good friend Roger arein Southampton seeking passage on a ship back to the Holy Land. But is soon becomes evident that somebody is doing their best to keep the pair from finding a ship. When Geoffrey's servant is killed by an arrow that was clearly meant for the knight, Sir Geoffrey is determined to find the culprit. But then events take a different turn. Ranulf Flambard is an escapee from the Tower of London. He is the Bishop of Durham, but more importantly the father of Roger. He has arrived to beg his son to go on an errand for him.
See Durham and die......horribly - By: Kay Affin, 07 Oct 2003 
Early mediaeval mystery fiction has long had its own sub-genres - the medico-legal/grim police procedural (Bernard Knight's Crowner John series), the cozy (Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael), the academic (Susanna Gregory's Matthew Bartholomew), the Holmes & Watson [Paul Harding(P C Doherty)'s Athelstan & Sir John] & so on. What there hasn't been a lot of is humour - perhaps because mediaeval life was hardly a barrel of laughs, what with famine, outlaws, unpredictable overlords & the risk of succumbing to a touch of the black death....
Fortunately Simon Beaufort's The Bishop's Brood remedies this. Its heroes are Geoffrey & Roger, two crusader knights who clank, Monty-Python-like, about Englandin full armour (with good reason: it's only a generation since the battle of Hastings, & the Normans are still about as popular as the Americansin Iraq....). Geoffrey (or Geoff as he is breezily known) is the (fairly) bright one with a conscience, Roger a sort of twelfth century rugby forward: happy-go-lucky, lustful, loyal, & apt to speak before he thinks. Attempting to set sail for the Holy Land from Southampton they end upin snowbound Durham on a secret mission for a devious bishop. The ensuing mayhem involves hidden treasure, stolen relics, a beautiful brothel-keeper, avaricious monks, a bent sheriff, a 90 year old witch who fought at Hastings, a man whose best (and only) friend is a pig & a stream of deaths by crossbow bolt, poison, strangulation, drowning... The plot is satisfyingly complex, the atmosphere of a snowbound city beautifully evoked & the dialogue often laugh aloud funny. But it really, really could have done with a street map: Durham is a very confusing city. Never mind: read & enjoy!
