ELLIS PETERS – One Corpse Too Many. Morrow, US, hardcover, 1980. First published by Macmillan, UK, hardcover, 1979. Fawcett Crest, US, paperback, 1981; several other reprint editions, in both hardcover and soft.

ELLIS PETERS One Corpse Too Many

   For a fine literate change of pace from your standard big city police procedural or private eye yarn, you could do worse than to try this, the latest mystery adventure to be tackled and solved by the 12th century’s answer to Sherlock Holmes, Brother Cadfael of Shrewsbury Abbey.

   Stop and think about it. One of the prime requirements of the detective story is that of bringing the murderer to justice, before both God and man. In the year 1138 who else would there be but a devoutly dedicated monk to carry out such a task?

   Assigned to burial detail after King Stephen’s successful siege of the rebellious Castle Foregate, Cadfael discovers that he cannot account for an extra body among those of ninety-four other condemned prisoners. Without a little urging on his part, it couldn’t be made clearer that the distinction between a murder and an execution would have otherwise escaped the minds of those in power completely.

   The plot is thicker than it seems, romance is determined to bloom even under the worst of conditions, and Cadfael is a solid man of the earth who realizes that God’s will may not always be done as honest men would see fit. He makes an ideal detective.

— Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier,
       Vol. 4, No. 4, July-August 1980 (slightly revised).


PostScript.   One Corpse Too Many was the second of the Brother Cadfael mysteries, the first being A Morbid Taste for Bones (1977/78). In an interview conducted by Ellen Nehr in 1991, Ellis Peters revealed that the first book was intended to be a one off, not the beginning of a series that turned out to be 13 books long.