So, all in all I'd recommend this book, and this whole series, for folks who choose based on criteria overlapping with mine.Ī sad and winding take that starts with a poisoned pie in Goody Anne's tavern. It's fun to read these medieval mysteries peppered amongst modern ones - sometimes you want them to just be able to do a DNA test on that blood! - but it makes them have to solve more by reasoning than science and that can be very thought-provoking. It builds quite a lot on the previous two books in the series (I always read them in order if at all possible) and is less of a Crime Mystery than almost a Romance, but I'm really more interested in characters than complex plots so I enjoyed it.

So, the Abbess Helewise (and she IS hella wise!) of 12th century Hawkenlye Abbey pretty much ticks all my boxes.Īs for this particular book, it actually features Helewise's partner-in-crime-solving, Sir Josse d'Acquin, more than the Abbess, but he's a likeable fellow, too. I've read plenty of male writers but I just find that a woman's voice is a better fit for the one in my own head as I'm reading. I've been reading a lot of mystery series in the last few years my criteria for choosing one to try include a) woman protagonist b) woman writer and c) interesting setting. The waters of this spring are similar in colour and taste to Tunbridge Wells's famous Chalybeat Spring, and it was this that prompted Alys's setting of her fictional Hawkenlye Abbey in the very spot where her own house now stands. In England, Alys's study overlooks a stretch of parkland which includes a valley with a little spring. She lives for part of the year in Brittany, in a remote cottage deep in an ancient landscape where many past inhabitants have left their mark on her doorstep are relics that date from the stone circles and dolmens of the Neolithic to the commanderies, chapels and ancient tracks of those infamous warrior monks, the Knights Templar. Brought up in the countryside close to where the Hawkenlye Novels are set, she went to school in Tonbridge and later studied archaeology at the University of Kent. Alys Clare is the pen name used by Elizabeth Harris for the Hawkenlye series of historical mysteries.Īlys Clare is the pseudonym of a novelist with some 20 published works to her name.

The Tavern in the Morning by Alys Clare