Among my favorite forms of mystery novels is the historical mystery and if you, too, enjoy reading mysteries set in years past then we share a sense of gratitude to the author Ellis Peters, the pen name for British writer Edith Pargeter, whose work redefined and breathed new life into the form.
| Ellis Peters |
Peters wrote ninety books in her lifetime, but it was her Brother Cadfael series, featuring a 12th-century Benedictine monk, which built a worldwide audience for historical mysteries.
In the twenty novels in the series, Brother Cadfael uses his finely honed skills as an herbalist at Shrewsbury Abbey to solve murders and other crimes during a tumultuous period of civil war in England.
The first book in the series, A Morbid Taste for Bones, was published in 1977. And Peters continued to write Cadfael novels until her death in 1995 at the age of eighty-two.
Other novelists have followed in her path, notably Anne Perry, writer of the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series set in Victorian England and Caleb Carr, whose novels The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness, are set in 19th century New York.
| Derek Jacobi |
The Cadfael series brought Peters acclaim from reviewers as well as prestigious literary awards. She received the Silver Dagger award of the British Crime Writers Association in 1980 for Monk’s Hood, her third Cadfael novel. Many of the novels were adapted for television in the 1990s with award-winning British actor Derek Jacobi in the lead role.
Peters was mostly self-educated, never having attended university. She drew on meticulous research to realistically evoke life in the 12th century as well as her knowledge and experience working as a chemist’s assistant to create the ointments, balms and other remedies Cadfael administers to his patients.
The Complete Brother Cadfael Series
A Morbid Taste for Bones (1977)
One Corpse Too Many (1979)
Monk’s Hood (1980)
Saint Peter’s Fair (1981)
The Leper of Saint Giles (1981)
The Virgin in the Ice (1982)
The Sanctuary Sparrow (1983)
The Devil’s Novice (1983)
Dead Man’s Ransom (1984)
The Pilgrim of Hate (1984)
An Excellent Mystery (1985)
The Raven in the Foregate (1986)
The Rose Rent (1986)
The Hermit of Eyton Forest (1987)
The Confession of Brother Haluin (1988)
A Rare Benedictine (1988)
The Heretic’s Apprentice (1989)
The Potter’s Field (1989)
The Summer of the Danes (1991)
The Holy Thief (1992)
Brother Cadfael’s Penance (1994)
Who Invented the Historical Mystery?
Lillian de la Torre, an American writer with master’s degrees from Columbia and Harvard, is credited with creating this sub-genre. De la Torre wrote a series of detective stories beginning in the 1940s casting the eighteenth-century literary figure Samuel Johnson as a sleuth with help from James Boswell, his biographer. The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson includes a compilation of eight stories.
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