MISTRESS OF THE ART OF DEATH
Ariana Franklin
Putnam
Historical Thriller
ISBN-10: 0399154140
ISBN-13: 9780399154140

The year: 1171. The place: England, or, more specifically, the road between Canterbury and Cambridge, as a party of pilgrims travels home from visiting the newly sainted (and recently murdered) Thomas a Becket's shrine. The setting for Chaucer's Canterbury Tales? Perhaps. But it's also the backdrop for the opening of Ariana Franklin's superb new thriller, MISTRESS OF THE ART OF DEATH.

If you've read Chaucer's tales, you know that pilgrims weren't necessarily the pious types you might expect. Far from it, in fact. And so it is among Franklin's pilgrims, although in this case, the extent of the impiety goes far deeper. For among the assembled pilgrims is a truly monstrous killer, a murderer of children.

Also among the company, riding humbly in a cart, are a Jewish detective, a Muslim eunuch bodyguard and a doctor. This may sound like the set-up for a joke, but the work of these three companions is deadly serious. They come from Italy at the order of the King of England, Henry II, in order to investigate a series of child murders in Cambridge, which the locals are blaming on the town's Jews. Henry has his own reasons for wanting the Jews exonerated, and so he has sent to Italy for their best "Master of the Art of Death," a specialized doctor who can "read corpses." Something like today's forensic scientists, these specialists, trained at the medical school in liberal Salerno, can find clues as to how --- and sometimes by whose hand --- victims were killed.

What Henry doesn't know, however, is that the "master" in this case is actually a "mistress," a young woman named Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, an accomplished doctor and the most celebrated post-mortem analyst in Salerno. No wonder she has been sent on this dark mission, accompanying Simon of Naples, a Jewish investigator, to determine the cause of death of four children. Before her work in Cambridge is done, though, Adelia will become far more intimately involved with the case than she had ever dared to imagine. During her stay in Cambridge, she will lose a dear friend and gain the love of her life --- sort of.

Although MISTRESS OF THE ART OF DEATH is the first thriller featuring Adelia, its author is far from a novice; Ariana Franklin is the pen name of British author Diana Norman, a former journalist, biographer and historical novelist. Franklin also happens to be a dedicated medieval history buff, and it shows. This thriller, in addition to being skillfully plotted, is also meticulously researched, giving readers bold new insights into cultural practices, political intrigues and medical knowledge of the day.

Readers, for example, may be surprised to learn that a female doctor such as Adelia is a completely conceivable historical character --- at least in Italy. Adelia, raised by a pair of doctors and surrounded by compassionate people of all faiths, is shocked and horrified by the ignorance, prejudice and small-mindedness she encounters in England.

Here she could be executed as a witch for practicing medicine; here the Jews, even the wealthy ones, are ghettoized and hanged or marched off to prison en masse at the first sign of trouble. Franklin's depiction of Adelia's cross-cultural friendships, as well as her discussion of the recent Crusades and their long-lasting effect on Christian-Islamic relations, seems intended not only to shed light on history but also to point a finger at more current political issues.

This is not to say, though, that MISTRESS OF THE ART OF DEATH is a dry historical tome. Far from it. In addition to bringing history vividly alive, Franklin crafts a top-notch plot, with twists that will continue to surprise readers to the very last page. Gory enough to gratify any Patricia Cornwell fan, detailed enough to satisfy medievalists and filled with a dozen or more well-realized supporting characters, Franklin's accomplished thriller crafts a 12th-century world that 21st-century readers will be eager to inhabit again.

   --- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

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