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A review by rrrebekahmay
Death of a Scholar by Susanna Gregory
3.0
This is probably more of a 2.5 star rating but I'll round it up for that last chapter. Death of a Scholar is the 20th book in the Matthew Bartholomew series, which is a historical crime series set in medieval Cambridge. I picked this up on a whim, after finding it super cheap in a bargain book shop, and this is the only book I've read in the series, I haven't read any of the 19 books that take place before this one. Because of this there were (a surprisingly large amount of) obscure references to things that had happened in previous books, which did take me out of the novel a little, but overall the book stands well by itself. I will say, though, that one of my biggest problems with this was that I didn't feel like I got a feel of 14th century Cambridge at all. There was no world building. I'm guessing this is because there are 19 books, most of which I'm guessing are set in the same place, before this one. So I am letting Susanna Gregory off the hook for that qualm.
World building aside, I really enjoyed Gregory's writing. Her characters were very entertaining for the most part, especially Michael, and I appreciated her using real people from the universities and court at that time to build the characters she used in her novel. The only character I had any sort of problem with was Matthew Bartholomew. At times he was such an idiot. He was extremely biased towards characters who had very obviously something wrong and I got more and more annoyed as he did it over and over and over again. Other characters did the same thing, but not to anywhere near the same extent as Bartholomew did. I just don't understand how he could be that blind to what was going on right under his nose. I'm hoping he isn't like that in the other books. Other than him I really enjoyed the characters Gregory created.
Like I said at the beginning of this review, I'm bumping this up to a three because that last chapter was fantastic. I loved the climax of the novel, though I can't really say that the rest of it felt like it was leading up to anything in particular. Finding out the solution of the mystery was worth finishing this novel for, but I did almost give up halfway through. While the pacing of this novel was ok, there was an awful lot of talking and not a lot of things happening. The vast majority of the novel seemed to be Michael and Bartholomew talking about the crime, though towards the last third of the book things started to get more interesting. Before that there was so much dialogue and nothing was going anywhere, characters were repeating each other's accusations and others were denying said accusations. I started to get bored very quickly. This edition is 450 pages long, but it definitely could have been shorter.
Saying that, I enjoyed this enough to want to start from the beginning. I'm interested to see how she builds up medieval Cambridge from the beginning and how these characters started out. I'm not sure I'll be dedicating my time to this whole series, but I'll definitely be checking out book one.
World building aside, I really enjoyed Gregory's writing. Her characters were very entertaining for the most part, especially Michael, and I appreciated her using real people from the universities and court at that time to build the characters she used in her novel. The only character I had any sort of problem with was Matthew Bartholomew. At times he was such an idiot. He was extremely biased towards characters who had very obviously something wrong and I got more and more annoyed as he did it over and over and over again. Other characters did the same thing, but not to anywhere near the same extent as Bartholomew did. I just don't understand how he could be that blind to what was going on right under his nose. I'm hoping he isn't like that in the other books. Other than him I really enjoyed the characters Gregory created.
Like I said at the beginning of this review, I'm bumping this up to a three because that last chapter was fantastic. I loved the climax of the novel, though I can't really say that the rest of it felt like it was leading up to anything in particular. Finding out the solution of the mystery was worth finishing this novel for, but I did almost give up halfway through. While the pacing of this novel was ok, there was an awful lot of talking and not a lot of things happening. The vast majority of the novel seemed to be Michael and Bartholomew talking about the crime, though towards the last third of the book things started to get more interesting. Before that there was so much dialogue and nothing was going anywhere, characters were repeating each other's accusations and others were denying said accusations. I started to get bored very quickly. This edition is 450 pages long, but it definitely could have been shorter.
Saying that, I enjoyed this enough to want to start from the beginning. I'm interested to see how she builds up medieval Cambridge from the beginning and how these characters started out. I'm not sure I'll be dedicating my time to this whole series, but I'll definitely be checking out book one.