Hermitage, Wat, and Some Murder or Other
by Howard of Warrick
Somewhere I saw a blurb for this book that called it “Norman
Nonsense.” What an apt description. The series features a bumbling lovable medieval
monk named Hermitage, and two sidekicks-- an itinerant weaver of dirty
tapestries named Wat, and a fiery young girl named Gwen who is masquerading as
a boy. In the first book Hermitage has
been sort of accidently named the King’s investigator of murders and in the
ensuing volumes he and his little group continue to travel the Wessex countryside solving bizarre
crimes.
In this one they are sent to
Norman France and are met almost immediately with a strange assortment of
bodies. One is a blacksmith whose head
has been replaced by an anvil and another is a wheelwright who has been
penetrated by the spoke of a wheel that he has been built into. What makes these
outings enjoyable is that they look at first glance to be similar to the Brother Cadfael series, but they turn out to be wacky Brother Cadfael parodies. Cadfael
investigates in dead seriousness (pardon the pun), but Warrick’s characters
come right out of Laurel and Hardy or the Marx Brothers. The villains are
horribly bloodthirsty beyond words, the main characters are likable bunglers, and the rest of
the world around them seems to come from central casting for looney tunes. The dialog style abounds with jokey historical
references and clever plays on words.
When taken as a whole there is a nice relief here from the more serious murder mystery genre. You might even say it provides relief from serious reading in general and god knows we Just might need some of that in these trying times.
When taken as a whole there is a nice relief here from the more serious murder mystery genre. You might even say it provides relief from serious reading in general and god knows we Just might need some of that in these trying times.
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