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THE SWORD OF SHAME, by the Medieval Murderers, is an anthology of seven short stories written in the same style as their previous one, THE TAINTED RELIC. The Medieval Murderers are a group of commercially and critically successful crime fiction writers, all working in the sub-genre of historical fiction. They include Susanna Gregory (and her other pseudonym, Simon Beaufort), Ian Morson, Bernard Knight, and Phillip Gooden. THE TAINTED RELIC is a wonderful sampling of their work, tightly strung together by a riveting plot involving a cursed shard of the True Cross that causes a millennium-long chain of tragedies. Unfortunately, the Medieval Murderers' second book tediously mirrors the first. This time, the item that travels through the centuries is a sword that was forged before the Battle of Hastings and used in that historic conflict -- by two brothers, who kill each other with it. They are an English Romulus and Remus, marring newborn England with filial murder just as the mythical twins did in Rome. From 1066 on, the sword's possessors betray and are betrayed; kill and are killed. As in the previous book, the sleuth characters find out that the sword is cursed, but it still proves tempting to centuries of luckless criminals. Finally, it finds its way to a London auction in 2005. This conclusion is strongly reminiscent of the final auction-house scene of the group-created episodic film THE RED VIOLIN, which, as I noted in my review of THE TAINTED RELIC, follows the same formula as the Medieval Murderers have done. Like THE TAINTED RELIC, THE SWORD OF SHAME is divided into five 'acts', a 'prologue', and an 'epilogue', and thematically suggests a medieval morality play. The effect of all the parallels between the two books is less eerie deja vu than Groundhog Day. That may be in part because the opening story is so weak. In this tale, written by Michael Jecks, we are introduced to the sword-maker Bran and the psychic and political conflicts that fuel his artistry. The description is over-expository, suspenseless, lifeless. Bran's mother "had been raped by Viking invaders," Jecks explains. "His mother had enough love remaining in her for Bran, but after what the Vikings did to her family, wiping out all the menfolk, she had nothing but revulsion for those responsible, and the man who raped her beside the body of her murdered father was the focus of all the spite and bile in her damaged soul." I found it amazing that all this melodrama and cliche fits neatly into one very long sentence. As the book continues, several of the characters who were on the trail of the cursed Crusade booty in THE TAINTED RELIC are back, chasing after this new cursed object and its victims. The Welsh woman Nesta is still running her inn, and Nick Revill is still playing for the King's Men under the watchful eye of William Shakespeare. There are a few original and interesting developments. In Jecks's second piece, the sword changes history by getting tangled up in the murder of Thomas a Becket. In Ian Morson's story, the setting is helpfully switched to Venice, where some interesting political intrigue is afoot. That story begins suspensefully in media res, and in the middle of the swamp that surrounds the City of Bridges. Figuring out how the prosperous half-English merchant Niccolo 'Nick' Zuliani got into this mess is interesting. If you want to know how to commit ballot fraud before the age of computers or hanging chads, Morson reveals one method. The book is worth reading for this story, and for Gooden's Nick Revill one, which is told in the same colourful, jaunty narrative voice as the one in THE TAINTED RELIC. In conclusion, the Medieval Murderers are clearly a group of skilled writers. However, their recycling of a good formula robs THE SWORD OF SHAME, to some degree, of its mystery.
Reviewed by Rebecca Nesvet, June 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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