Relics by
Pip Vaughan-Hughes
pbk out January 07
(Orion)
at £6.99
This is not a crime novel, more a swashbuckling adventure, verging on a
fantasy. Books about religious relics set in medieval times are becoming
almost a genre in themselves, with Ellis Peters' A Morbid Taste for
Bones, then the series by Sylvian Hamilton and more recently The
Tainted Relic by the Medieval Murderers.
This new one is set in 1235 and concerns Brother Petroc, a young novice
monk at a fictional abbey, who falls foul of the dastardly ex-Templar Sir
Hugh de Kervezey, who turns out to be the bishop's bastard son.
Petroc is framed for the theft of a gold-sheathed hand of a saint from the
altar of the abbey, in which a priest is murdered by Sir Hugh. Petroc goes
on the run, back to Dartmoor, his old home. He is pursued by the villainous
knight, with no respite until he boards a ship at Dartmouth, which
turns out to be haven for renegades and runaways, run by a Cathar captain
who is part smuggler and part-relic dealer. They sail away to the Faroes,
Iceland and Greenland, where they pick up an exiled Greek princess, with
whom Petroc naturally falls in love. Back they come via the Scottish
Isles, Dublin and Bordeaux to Italy and then the Greek islands, always
with Sir Hugh on their tail, seeking the corpse of one of St Ursula's
eleven thousand virgin martyrs.
The story is fast paced and violent, rather like a 13th century James Bond
story. Petroc suffers repeated injuries that would have killed a dozen men
but he survives to ensure that good triumphs over evil.
The writing is excellent, given added punch by the immediacy that a first-
person narrative bestows and the rollicking gusto allows one to forgive
the unbelievability of the plot.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
; width=){kind=small}
Relics by
Pip Vaughan-Hughes
