Mystery Novels Are Often Set

Mystery novels are often set in drafty castles. But what makes the Brother Cadfael mystery by Ellis Peters entitled A Morbid Taste for Bones so unique is that it spins a tale of intrigue set during the Middle Ages. It is not merely set in a contemporary location that suggests the gothic and the strange -- the time period is also strange to the reader.

However, although the setting may be foreign, the plot suggests that people have not changed very much, between the days when medieval castles were first being built and the contemporary era. This truth is manifest in the character of the central protagonist and detective. Despite the fact that he appears to be quiet and retiring to the naked eye, Brother Cadfael is no ordinary monk. He has lived a long and colorful past before assuming holy orders.

Peters suggests that even religious brothers are not so different from you or I Brother Cadfael understands the workings of the human heart and mind with tolerance rather than with religious scrupulosity.

"He had, after all, chosen this cloistered life with his eyes open." (1) There are whispers amongst the other members of the monastery, presumably true, that "in a life such as he [Cadfael] had led there [in Jerusalem] there must have been some encounters with women, and not presumably chivalrous, and what sort of grounding was that for convental life?" (2) But Cadfael, when tending his garden, seems to enjoy his work as Benedictine monk at Shrewsbury Abbey although he has fought violently during Crusades.

He has also undertaken the study of herbs, which gives him insight into the ways of life and death, and presumably the tools of murder and healing. The first scene of the novel, in a presumable foreshadowing, shows Cadfael "pricking out cabbage seedlings"...his thoughts on "growth and fertility, not at all on graves and reliquaries and violent deaths." (1) He enjoys the natural world and the open air more than a morning mass, but eventually the world intrudes upon Cadfael's sense of peace.

Morbid Taste for Bones Chapters 3-4 So and at the very same slanting angle did the feathered flight of the arrow that jutted out from under the cage of his ribs." (68) These words cement the dramatic conclusion of Chapter 4 of A Morbid Taste for Bones -- and begin the central, driving murder mystery that lies at the heart of the plot of the tale. Brother Cadfael and the Prior of the Abbey are on a pilgrimage to a town in Wales to visit the shrine of Saint Winifred.

The Prior of his Abbey hopes that these relics, if brought to Shrewsbury will bring enrichment to the Benedictine monks, as more pilgrims will visit the Abbey. The dead man is Rhisiart, one of the community activists most angrily against moving the remains of the saint. Cadfael shows that he is still an active man, despite his age and his current retirement in the Abbey, as he pushes back the brush in a desperate search for the Welshman.

The quest for the saint's pones on the part of Cadfael's Benedictine Abbey (although Cadfael does not support his prior's action, necessarily, although he is bound by a vow of obedience) shows how the concerns of the medieval era are not so different from our own. Human nature has not changed.