Breaker of Bones
The last few chapters of this novel will have you gripped! A serial killer is on the loose in Queen Isabel and King Fernando’s Spain, one who sickly stitches animal parts onto young women’s tortured bodies. Thomas is English, long in service to the Caliphs in Andalucía, steeped in their skills, so he is summoned to assist the Queen with her son’s injury against the wishes of her chaplain, the powerful Bishop Mandana in Cordoba. So the first enemy is made. Everyone is suspicious of the Englishman who dresses like a Moor and yet earns the ear of the Queen of Spain. With each hideous murder, Thomas seems further from the truth. Twists and turns there are many, with a thrilling race to the end when there is capture, torture, imprisonment and a race to save all and sundry through wolf-filled country.
Penny writes vividly, very much in the style of the male thriller writer, with terse sentences and short chapters, and makes us feel in period without too much history. He has a light touch. I literally didn’t put this book down for the last five chapters. It’s what you expect of a thriller – a good, quick, absorbing read.
The cover detracts, as it is in the style of modern thriller writers but does not really depict the depth of time and place in this book. There are also occasions when the short chapters irritate, and there could be some editing of dialogue, as this is a dialogue-driven book. I also found it highly unlikely that a Spanish duquesa of the period would openly have affairs. The characterisation is light; several we don’t get to know or don’t fully understand their motivations… but that is the style of the genre – and I still raced to the end.
