Suffer the Little Children is both set in a refreshing time period for a mystery (7th century Ireland) and provides a rich environment of violence, intrigue, scholarly pursuit, and ecclesiastical change. I’ve personally just discovered this series of historical mysteries and I am fascinated by t...
I'm not usually a fan of short stories, but this sounded interesting, and it was. Sister Fidelma is, in addition to a sister in the Celtic church and the sister of a King, also an advocate in the Brehon courts. She goes where she is needed to investigate and where necessary, represent those accus...
I've enjoyed some of Tremayne's early horror novels but this was the first Sister Fidelma story I'd tackled. For those who don't know, the Sister Fidelma books are historical murder mystery novels set in ancient Ireland.This is a fun read. There's no faulting Tremayne's scholarly approach to the ...
I have to say, I was a little bored with this one. Mainly because the villain and setting were so strikingly similar to the book immediately previous. And I had the suspects narrowed down to two (one correct) near the very beginning and for the right reasons. On another note, I wish to point o...
The second in a series featuring Sister Fidelma, a 7th century female detective/lawyer (a dalaigh) from Ireland. The setting is Rome with its politicians, merchants, clerics, politicians, soldiers, and pilgrims. The murder takes place in the guest rooms of the Lateran Palace in Rome. There are a ...
Originally published on my blog here in January 2001.The seventh Sister Fidelma mystery is to be the last, as far as I am concerned. I had hoped that with the setting moved away from Ireland the novel would be an improvement on the previous couple in the series, which had got into something of a ...
A mystery story set in medieval Ireland and featuring a lawyer/sleuth noblewoman, Peter Tremayne's The Leper's Bell is a fascinating and satisfying novel. I enjoyed the setting very much, especially Tremayne's use of actual Irish terms to describe things (he defines them in the text, too) which h...
Peter Tremayne doesn’t play fair in The Subtle Serpent, the fourth installment in the Sister Fidelma series. In Agatha Christie fashion, he doesn’t introduce important potential suspects until late in the game and ultimately fails in communicating the motive for the killing. Yes, he spells out th...
A Prayer for the Damned is the 17th book in Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma series of murder mystery novels set in 7th century Ireland. In this story, an abbot is killed on the eve of Fidelma's wedding to Eadulf. The murder has significant political repercussions, that could in the worst case lea...
I've read four of the Sister Fidelma mysteries now. I don't read serial novels very much, and when i do I like to be able to read them out of order. I read this one after the first one because it was the "Christmas" offering in the series. No. 11 in the series, it turned out to be spookier, gritt...
6th in the Sister Fidelma series.[return][return]I have complained in reviews of Tremayne s characterization of Fidelma, which is the really serious flaw in this series. She comes across as a more or less wooden figure when she s not angry. There s almost nothing about her that is likeable, actua...
No. 7 in the Sister Fidelma series.[return][return]I sometimes (no, often) ask myself why I keep up with this series, since it s not particularly well written and its protagonist, Sister Fidelma, is one of the most uninteresting in the genre. What few (and far between) expressions of emotion she ...