The Devil’s Seal by Peter Tremayne ***

Set in 7th-century Ireland, The Devil’s Seal by Peter Tremayne is the 25th Sister Fidelma novel. Sister Fidelma is a dalaigh (district attorney), sister to the king, and married to Eadulf (a Saxon from England). The story opens with an unexplained murder, followed by more murders and attempted murders, mysterious and seemingly unrelated. Fidelma observes, “A tangled skein can be untangled if one has patience.”

Eadulf summarizes the mystery like this.

“We start with the murder of a Saxon cleric. Then there is the attack on my brother and his companion… We think they were attacked by robbers… The robbers are…killed, except for their leader. He…is then murdered. … Someone tries to kill us.”

The attacks and murders continue with no obvious pattern.

In the end, Fidelma, possibly speaking for the author, states, “It was a complicated plot.” Ultimately, the plot hangs on the possibility to steal and sell a unique artifact that has no value unless publicly displayed. I was not convinced and thus found the resolution unsatisfying.

I enjoyed that Eadulf, husband of Fidelma, came from Seaxmund’s Ham, in the land of the South Folk of the Kingdom of the East Angles. I spend some time working in present-day Saxmundam in Suffolk County in East Anglia. Certainly the same place.

The book regularly jumped to modern times. I could ignore kilometers (19th century) because the concept of measuring distance existed in the 7th century. However, I found antiseptic and sedative more jarring, because these are 19th-century concepts. Most surprising was the “tinkle” of breaking windows when the technology for such windows was still a millennium away.

If you have the patience to read through lengthily digressions on Catholic dogma (the middle third of the book), the mysteries are solved through tortured logic that I feel has logical Fidelma rolling over in her grave. If you don’t have a strong interest in early Catholic and Irish history, you probably want to take a pass on this one.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for book recommendations.