Ravens Hill: The Atheling Chronicles, #5
If you wish there were more cozy mysteries set in Anglo-Saxon England, this is the novel for you. Harald Atheling and his witty wife Selia, like an eleventh-century “Nick and Nora,” sleuth their way through a leisurely snoop around the manor and village they’ve just been awarded by Harald’s father, King Cnute. As they interview sly stewards, scheming abbesses, doughty serfs, and rebellious teens, they begin to suspect this is not the sleepy Mercian village it appears to be. Harald, a principled man more comfortable on the battlefield than in the “tún-lord’s” office, must learn how to manage unruly, competing citizens in peacetime.
This is the fifth novel in Pettersen’s Atheling Chronicles series, but readers will find it easy to understand Harald’s situation and how the Viking noble ended up in an ordinary village. The narrative alternates between Harald’s first-person point of view and third-person descriptions of other characters, so that Harald’s investigation is more of a “how-dunnit” than a “who-dunnit;” the multiple voices effectively create a sense of real life and intimacy in the story. A firmer editing hand is needed as there is a lot of over-explaining; most distracting is the insistence on italicizing any word that is even remotely connected to Anglo-Saxon. But Pettersen has handled his appealing characters and tightly constructed plot well, and fans will look forward to seeing how a more settled Harald builds his growing community.
