The Templar, The Queen, and Her Lover

I used to love Michael Jecks's mysteries featuring Sir Baldwin de Furnshill.  I don't anymore.  I still enjoy the scenes between Baldwin and his friend Simon Puttock, but they no longer solve mysteries I care about.  Baldwin is not a political creature - please send him back to Devon, Mr. Jecks.  I'm sure you can create some local murders for him to solve.

Edward II released his wife from house arrest in 1325, and made her his envoy in negotiations with her brother, Phillip IV of France.  Isabella's entourage includes musicians (who've been blackmailed into making the trip), spies (both for and against the Queen), knights, ladies-in-waiting, and an unwilling Sir Baldwin.  Someone drowns one of the musicians in a gutter before the group set out, then someone stabs one of the knights with Baldwin's knife.  This happened about 100 pages into the book, and it's about where I lost track and lost interest.  I'm still not sure who committed either murder, or how they tied into Isabella's diplomatic mission or her affair with Roger Mortimer.  Jecks overcomplicated The Templar, The Queen, and Her Lover with too many bland characters, too many POV and setting changes, and too many disparate threads.  I have two or three more of his books on my shelf, and I will read them.  After that?   I don't know.  I feel like I've invested too much in this series to give up (literally - I've gotten most of the books from amazon.co.uk), but that's also why buying the next book in the series is, literally, a bit of an investment.

Dispensation of Death

I think Michael Jecks changed editors with Dispensation of Death.  It's a much more tightly plotted and cleanly paced book than his last several Sir Baldwin novels.  Or maybe he just realized he didn't need a subplot to get his novel past the 450-page line.  He's still keeping Baldwin and Simon away from their Devon homes, but at least he allows them to work as a team.

Baldwin and Simon have travelled to London; Baldwin to serve in Parliament and Simon at the request of the Bishop of Exeter.  They are thrust into a court in disarray - Edward II has essentially imprisoned his Queen Isabella with his niece (and his lover's wife) Eleanor as her de facto jailer.  Soon, a masked attacker kills one of her ladies in waiting and a known assassin's mutilated body is found behind Edward's throne.  Baldwin and Simon set out to solve both murders, despite Sir Hugh le Despenser's disguised threat to reveal Baldwin's history as a Knight Templar and the King's disinterest in solving the original crime once Hugh is himself targeted by an assassin.  Jecks effectively uses shifting POV to move the story along and neatly interlaces the plot threads, ending with a slight twist.  For the first time in a while, I'm looking forward to reading the next Sir Baldwin mystery.  I just hope that I'm not disappointed - the final page implies that his next adventure will be in France, and the knight's last overseas trip when the series started to decline.

The Malice of Unnatural Death

Dear Mr. Jecks,

This is your 22nd novel, and I've read all 22 over the past 13 years. I'd like to say I've enjoyed them all, but somewhere around the 15th volume, your books became a bit of a slog. I think I've figured out what your problem is - you're putting Baldwin and Simon in too broad of a context. For 15 books, you had them solving local mysteries - the external world of the 14th Century might be mentioned but had little if any effect on the matter at hand. Then you sent your detectives on pilgrimage - an interesting plot device, but not one that worked particularly well. Still, it was less distracting than your recent habit of injecting the political intrigue of the 1320s into Dartmoor. Yes, the battles between Isabella and Edward II and his lovers are intriguing, but they feel tacked on when they affect a local baron and his friend the bailiff. Alison Weir's biography of Isabella was fascinating and your series takes place while she was in power, but that doesn't mean you have to tie her into your plots.

It's sad, because there are some good parts to The Malice of Unnatural Death, and the idea of a necromancer attempting to murder long-distance is fascinating. You've tied this quite well to the subplot concerning the order of succession at a local abbey, and Coroner Richard's booming personality is more amusing than distracting this time around. You've finally figured out the right tone for that character, and I now look forward to seeing him again. All you need to do is trim about 50 pages of obfuscation and keep the bulk of your story local. A good editor can help you do this - perhaps it's time to find a new one.

The Death Ship of Dartmoor

I think I've figured out what Michael Jecks's problem is - he needs a new editor.  I still enjoy reading about Sir Baldwin and Simon Puttock, and Jecks still vibrantly draws 14th Century England.  I just wish he'd return to the tight plotting he used in his earlier novels.

The Death Ship of Dartmoor is at least an improvement over the last two installments in the series, and the main mystery is fairly engrossing.  Simon is now the Keeper of the Port of Dartmouth and when a ship comes into harbor, burned and with the crew missing but the cargo intact, it's his job to figure out what happened.  Baldwin appears not to help him but to try to find Bishop Walter Stapleton's nephew who has disappeared in Dartmoor and may be the man found murdered in a hole in Dartmoor's main road.  While Baldwin's mystery is yet another disposable subplot, the fate of the titular death ship was interesting enough to keep Jecks off 'probation' and Sir Andrew de Limpsfield (the coroner and this volume's comic character) was actually amusing and helped advance the plot.  Jecks's 20th novel may signal a return to form, and I really hope it is.  Mainly because I don't want to think I've wasted money (amazon.co.uk does not offer free trans-Atlantic shipping) and I've got six more volumes on my bookshelf.

A Friar's Bloodfeud

I'm not sure what to do about Michael Jecks.  His last few books have been disappointing, but I've got 7 unread installments in his Sir Baldwin de Funshill and Simon Puttock series sitting on my shelf, most of which I bought from amazon.co.uk with the exchange rate and international shipping fees you'd expect.  Maybe Jecks needs to slow down a bit (he releases a book every 9 or 10 months, where most authors wait a year or so between books), because the last two books I've read have felt rushed, with poorly integrated subplots.

Yes, it's still the Year of the Subplot in my personal library, and Jecks's editor should have removed the 40 pages or so devoted to Lady Jeanne's maid.  If Emma had been mentioned in earlier books, it was only in passing, and her only role here is to exasperate Baldwin.  

The main plot is a little tighter.  Two years before the novel opens, Simon's servant Hugh had married a young woman who'd been released from her vows as a nun.  Their hut is attacked and burned, apparently killing Hugh and his wife and son.  Baldwin and Simon travel to investigate the crime, and find that a wealthy young widow has been killed as well.  Both crimes turn out to be part of a property dispute which Baldwin and Simon solve while Baldwin's servant Edgar helps insure that justice is served.

I enjoyed A Friar's Bloodfeud more than I enjoyed The Butcher of St. Peter's, because the main plot was clearer and more engrossing and the characters better fleshed out.  Maybe Jecks is pulling out of his slump.  I hope so because I like Baldwin and Simon and wish Jecks would return to giving them stories worthy of their characters.

The Butcher of St. Peter's

I have mixed feelings about prolific series-bases writers.  Michael Jecks produces a mystery about every nine months, which means that I usually have more than one of his titles in my infrequent amazon.co.uk deliveries, and if I were to stop importing paperbacks, I'd still have half a dozen Sir Baldwin mysteries sitting on my shelf.

Unfortunately, The Butcher of St. Peter's is far from the best novel in the series.  Jecks seems to be in a bit of a lull, writing less vividly than he did a dozen years and 15 or 16 books ago.  The Keeper of the King's Peace, Sir Baldwin Furnshill, has been called to Exeter to solve a dispute over the estate and remains of a wealthy man.  As he and Bailiff Simon Puttock try to untangle this complicated and uninvolving problem, they are drawn into the murder of a prominent citizen.  We should suspect the titular butcher, but we don't - like the people of Exeter, we know he's a broken but ultimately harmless man.  Unfortunately, I didn't care who committed the murder, or the resolution of Sir Henry's estate and burial, or the actions of a medieval crime lord.  It's a kitchen sink of a novel, in which these three minor mysteries are mixed with Sir Baldwin's guilt over his brief encounter (while shipwrecked) with another woman, his wife Jeanne's fear that she has lost her husband's love, and the preening of Sir Baldwin's nemesis, Sir Perigrine de Barnstaple.  I enjoy spending time with these characters, but I wish Jecks had devised a stronger plot.