A Season of Knives

This is another wonderful installment in the Robert Carey series of (loosely defined) mysteries set on the 16th-century Scottish Border.Anyone tired of twee, cutesy historical mysteries should read these immediately. Chisholm writes in a spare style which successfully infuses both humor and drama into the story. The characters, particularly the secondary characters, are endlessly appealing and the pacing of the plot is high-tension and breakneck. The hard-luck Border setting adds interest.Season of Knives starts only days after the end of A Famine of Horses, the first book. Carey is trying to seduce the married Lady Elisabeth. Everyone in the area is struggling to get their hay harvest in -- except for Carey's enemies, who plan a raid to kidnap the Lady. Meanwhile, a local man is killed, and the list of possible culprits grows. There are some especially wonderful scenes here -- one in which corrupt rations dealers are offered their own wares is almost worth the price of the book by itself. There's plenty of fast-moving action and a bittersweet end. Here and there plausibility falters (would a woman theoretically outraged enough to cut her husband's throat really hesitate because it would mean washing all the sheets?) but overall this book sets a very high standard.

Set along the Scots/English border during the late sixteenth century, this story is loaded with action. Sir Robert Carey is a cousin of Queen Elizabeth and the new Deputy Warden of the West March, a very rough part of England where family feuds are important and Carey is an outsider with no land and few men to rally for support in a battle. His one asset locally is his sister, Philadelphia, who is married to the influential Lord Scrope. Carey also gets much needed help from Sergeant Henry Dodd. The sergeant has a knack for showing up just in time. Together they make a formidable duo. Carey has birth, influence and the Queen's favor. Dodd has a good solid tower, land at lease and kin who will follow him.

Patricia Finney is P.F. Chisholm. Residing in Cornwall, England, P.F. Chisholm is no stranger to writing, having begun when she was seven and first getting published at 18. A Season Of Knives is her second adventure based on the life of Sir Robert Carey, a Deputy Warden who really lived during the reign of Queen Bess in 1592. Sir Robert has just become Deputy Warden of the West March, and has just come off of an adventure with horse rustling and treason (which is the subject of A Famine of Horses. P.F. Chisholm continues his adventures with A Surfeit of Guns and A Plague of Angels, and is presently working on her fifth Sir Robert Carey adventure.Sir Robert Carey is supposed to enforce peace along the border of Scotland and England. He is handsome, chivalrous, intelligent, and is trying to avoid his creditors. He is also deeply in love with a married woman, Elizabeth Widdrington, who returns his love but is duty bound to her nasty husband. When Sir Robert rushes off to stop an attempted kidnaping of his beloved, he returns to find himself accused of the murder of the paymaster who has just been fired. Sir Robert's servant Barnabus has been imprisoned, and it is up to Sir Robert to investigate the crime to clear his good name and free his servant. His enemy, Sir Richard Lowther, is obviously in the middle of a scheme to undo Sir Robert: "`On what evidence, Sir Richard, do you base your accusations?' he demanded, hearing his voice brittle with the effort not to shout. `On the evidence of a knife owned by your servant and a glove owned by yerself that I found by the body.' `How frightfully convenient for you,' Carey drawled. `Did you have much trouble stealing one of my gloves?'"Sir Robert Carey is a double-edged hero suitable for the best period novels: he is languishing in love with a married woman while every single woman within reach sighs with longing for him; is a poor aristocrat who has to take grief from both sides of the fence because of not really fitting in; and has to perform a job that would undo many a man. P.F. Chisholm has found a historical figure who will provide grist for the mill for many adventures to come.Shelley Glodowski, Reviewer