This series of blog posts features my favorite mystery and historical fiction authors.

Edith Pargeter (1913-1995) was the author of the Brother Cadfael mystery series. She was born and bred in Shropshire, England. Her long and prolific writing career, beginning in 1936,  included short stories, contemporary crime fiction, historical novels, and historical mysteries under various pseudonyms, including Ellis Peters. She was also a translator. After visiting Czechoslovakia in 1947, she became fluent in Czech and translated Czech literature into English.

I first came in contact with her Brother Cadfael medieval mystery series on a visit to a friend who lived in Shrewsbury. The people there were prodigiously proud of their local mystery author, and I was soon hooked as well.

The main character is a Welsh monk at the Benedictine abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul at Shrewsbury during the Anarchy (1138-1153), one of England’s several civil wars. Brother Cadfael is a former crusader, so he has a lot of experience with people, travel, and violent injuries, and he is also an herbalist, so he knows about poison. With these qualifications, he makes a great detective. He becomes friends with the sheriff of Shropshire, and this gives him access to more information and manpower than he would otherwise have. The series addresses many aspects of medieval life and thought, giving the stories great variety. There are twenty books in the series, as well as several short stories. The books progress sequentially with an overall character arc for Cadfael, but they will still make sense if you read them out of sequence.

As a postgrad, I found that all my medieval studies colleagues loved the Cadfael books—almost as a guilty pleasure, because they were so fun to read and had no footnotes or bibliography to get through! Once, one of my friends in the department brought me her box set to read when I was ill.

I was delighted when some of the books were made into a TV series starring Sir Derek Jacobi. Although I love the shows, in my opinion some of the best stories were never filmed. This was probably for budgetary reasons. For instance, the last book, Brother Cadfael’s Penance, involves events in several cities and the siege and capture of a castle.

The first Brother Cadfael book was published in 1977, when historical mysteries were virtually unknown. In fact, this series is credited with popularizing historical mystery as a distinct subgenre. To me, it’s interesting to contrast the early covers of Cadfael books with later versions once the series became popular. At first, it seems, her publisher didn’t know how to market a detective novel set in the Middle Ages, so with these early editions, there is little on the cover that suggests the time period.

Ellis Peters ‘hit the big time,’ as they say, in about 1980, when she had been writing for decades and had finished her third Cadfael book. The catalyst, ironically, was the publication of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. This was a mainstream bestseller, and all of a sudden the reading public was yearning for more medieval mysteries. Now Ellis Peters’ publishers began to lean into the historical aspect of the series, and the book covers reflect the medieval setting. The ‘illuminated manuscript’ covers are the ones I like best. They were the ones I was irresistibly drawn to in a bookshop or library. With a cover like that, you know it’s going to be good.

The Cadfael books are written in a literary style, with fine descriptions of landscape and character. Many readers, including me, love this aspect of Peters’ writing. However, readers accustomed to the more pared-down style of contemporary mystery novels may find her work slow going. Also, Peters writes a little romance sub-plot into each story. Including some star-crossed lovers for Cadfael to help allows Peters to bring out Cadfael’s grandfatherly side and it adds some youthful freshness to the cast of characters.