Traitor in the Ice
This is a country house murder mystery, and a very good one. The investigator, Daniel Pursglove, is a flawed genius with an interesting past, there is a host of colourful suspects, each with a guilty secret, sub-plots abound, and there are three murders and a dramatic denouement. But this is more than a detective story set in the past. It is an historical novel in the fullest sense, very much rooted in its time and place.
The time is 1607, in the ferocious winter that marked the onset of the Little Ice Age. England is still in shock after the narrow escape from a massive terrorist outrage, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Religious fanatics are at large, ready to kill and die for their faith. The security services see conspiracies everywhere.
The place is Battle Abbey in Sussex, home to the Catholic (and hence potentially treasonous) Montague family and close enough to the coast to be convenient for refugees, assassins, and spies. Maitland is scrupulous and painstaking with her research, and the icy weather and fevered political climate are expertly conveyed. This is the second of her Pursglove stories. I look forward to the next.
