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It is 1382 and the peasants are revolting. Life is certainly nasty and brutish for the majority of the population and short for quite a few characters in HANGMAN BLIND, which is set in the immediate aftermath of the horrific repression of Wat Tyler's rising. Hildegard, the protagonist, became a nun when the news that her husband, Hugh, had died in France was confirmed. Her children are grown and she felt that life as a nun would suit her. It is now her ambition to found and lead a small sub-priory. Her prioress approves this venture but also wants her to spy on their superior, the abbot of Meaux, whom she suspects is on the side of the Avignon pope - for this was also that period in which there were two popes, vigorously plotting the overthrow of the other. On her way to Meaux Hildegard comes across the bodies of five men on a gibbet and another who has been killed in the vicinity. Having encountered the formidable abbot, Hubert de Courcy, she makes her way to Castle Hutton in the hope that Lord Roger de Hutton will be able to provide her with a suitable site for her priory. Castle Hutton was also her childhood home but when she arrives she finds a state of considerable confusion. Violence, an attempted murder, and then an actual one soon follow. Hildegard is drawn into attempting to solve the crimes with the aid of the Saxon steward Ulf. It is almost impossible to avoid comparison of HANGMAN BLIND with Ariana Franklin's Mistress of the Art of Death series. Certainly they are set two centuries apart but they share unconventional female protagonists; more importantly they both take their history seriously and load their books with descriptions and analyses of the social and political situation in their respective time-periods. Franklin's Adelia is both a more improbable and more overtly feminist heroine than Hildegard; as Adelia is not a nun she can be more sexually active than Hildegard, although there are certainly temptations for the latter in HANGMAN BLIND as she attracts considerable attention. The problem for both authors however is to balance their desire to make historical observations with producing a good and compelling mystery plot. Unfortunately Clark does not really succeed in this. Just as the mystery plot starts to get going there is another digression into the social or political situation. Worse still when the solutions are eventually produced they are something of a damp squib - there is nothing unexpected or revelatory here. The narrative is reasonably paced and individual scenes, especially those of the woman in jeopardy kind, well written, as are the Yorkshire locations. The strength of the book, as with Franklin's, is in the quality of the historical imagination and the attempt at integrating the political and social situation into the plot. But this is also the weakness in that these aspects tend to overwhelm what is a fairly average mystery plot.
Reviewed by Nick Hay, November 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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