The Medieval Murderers are Mike Jecks, Susanna Gregory, Bernard Knight, Ian Morson and Philip Gooden.

This story of a cursed fragment of the True Cross stolen in the sack of Jerusalem is effectively five short mysteries linked by the relic.

Although I have read historical mysteries by two of the authors previously I found that the format made it difficult to get into the book, and I made several attempts before I was able to finish the book. It was perhaps easier with the mysteries involving characters I have read about previously, but even these parts of the book were not entirely successful, with no room for any great depth of mystery or character development. I was not sufficiently involved to care about whodunit or why.

The book may work reasonably well as a taster to try out the different authors and see which you want to try other books by. None of the parts are bad, but none are outstanding - my favourite is the epilogue!

Jan Harris, England
June 2007