The Seventeenth Chronicle of Brother Cadfael. An ex-soldier, now the herbilist and sometime healer at the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Shrewsbury, he with his friend the Sheriff, Hugh Beringar, have been called to see the bones of a woman found buried in a field recently acquired by the monastery. Since Cadfael is not a monk and his abbot is lenient, knowing his ability to ferret out clues, he is able to travel about the countryside a bit and speak to villagers to find out who she is and who knew her. How he goes about solving this mystery makes for a wonderful read. All Peters stories are equally enthralling, and it would be very difficult to pick a favorite, but the solution I found was quite a surprise. One of the most interesting things about this series is that there is a Shrewsbury on the River Severn and that here was an Abbey there in the twelfth century. These stories give the reader an insight into life in the England of long ago. Perhaps there was a Brother Cadfael. The Abbey church is in the process of being restored; I’m sure Miss Peters is helping.
