A Bone of Contention by Susanna Gregory Review
A Bone of Contention by Susanna Gregory
St. Martin's Press, 1997.Hardback, 375 pages.
ISBN: 031216792X.
Ordering information:
Amazon.com.

Armed with all this fascinating dossier, the reader can trustfully follow this guide into an eye opening tour of the medieval mind as it tries to bring reason and logic to bear on crimes committed in a landscape that ranges from the magnificent to the putrid. Ms. Gregory creates a protagonist who is so far ahead of his contemporaries that he fails to see any use in doing star charts for his patients, and who also is so literal in his scientific cast of mind that he fails to foresee any difficulties that might arise from inviting both an eligible young lady and a well known harlot as his dinner guests at the college festival. The good doctor's friend and colleague is the sagacious, and faithful Brother Michael who, although totally unencumbered with 20th century standards of personal hygiene and healthful eating, is always there to bring the puzzled physician's reasoning down to a more pragmatic level. These two sincere but often puzzled detectives living at the dawn of forensic science become increasingly more attractive to the reader as the plot evolves, and the final solution shows the reader a fascinating example of criminal psychosis as it plays itself out in the Age of Faith. You will understand the fourteenth century mind far more when you have read this book, and you will also have enjoyed a very good mystery.
--Sarah Reaves White
Return to the October 1998 issue of The IWJ.
More from Writers Write