The Rose Rent

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The Rose Rent, by Ellis Peters

 It's been a while since I read a Brother Cadfael mystery, and it was about time.  And I found one I'd never read before!  The Rose Rent is about a wealthy widow who has given her house to the abbey because she couldn't live where she had been so happy and lost her husband and child-to-be.  In a gesture worthy of a chivalric ballad, she requires that the abbey pay her a yearly rent of one perfect rose from the white rosebush in the garden.  But then a young monk is murdered beneath the rose-tree, now hacked and mutilated--and the widow herself is kidnapped.

A nice mystery, short, but as good as the other Cadfael mysteries.  Though I certainly got tired of hearing about the widow's "great sheaf of hair."  That image must have been repeated 10 times in a 200-page story.

Comments

  1. Christine HardingMarch 1, 2013 at 6:59 AM

    I always enjoy Cadfael. Haven't read this for a while, and I don't remember the constant references to the widow's hair, but I will look out for them! Actually I'm in the middle of re-reading A Morbid Taste for Bones.

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