The Tainted Relic by The Medieval Murderers

The only time I could truly understand the story was when it moved up to William Shakespeare's time. They died before I had a chance to know them or the people solving the crimes or the people doing the killing or even why the killing was occurring, except part of it was to get the relic back from whoever had it. My issue was not following who was dying and it seemed like there were a lot of victims with each story. I got that the relic was supposedly cursed and death followed in its wake. It took me a little while to get into the story and then to understand everything that was going on.

The Epilogue does make for such an ironic ending that I just groaned aloud.I listened to this at work and that might have been part of my not digging it as much as I could have. I could never make myself care anything about what was happening to the relic and since that is the item which carried through from one 'act' to another the book never worked for me on anything more than a superficial, investigative level. The story is very uneven, surely a result of so many differing styles of writing, and I found that it was really rather uninteresting to me. The book served it's purpose in that way, but this particular novel is not something I would ever wish to read again. I had already read a novel by one of the authors featured here and had not liked the style of writing, but I did want to use this method to find out whether I might enjoy reading the works of some of the other authors. Prologue - Jerusalem 1100, pages 1-27, written by Simon Beaufort*Īct One - Devonshire 1194, pages 28-108, written by Bernard KnightĪct Two - Oxford 1269, pages 109-194, written by Ian MorsonĪct Three - Lincolnshire, 1323, pages 195-293, written by Michael JecksĪct Four - Cambridge, 1353, pages 294-425, written by Susanna Gregory*Īct Five - London, 16?, pages 426-500, written by Philip GoodenĮpilogue - London, 2005, two pages, written by Bernard Knight

The segments are written in novella form, meaning that there are no chapter breaks, merely spaces within the segments which signify passage of time or moving to the perspective of another character. According to the curse, any person who actually touched the relic itself, not just the container, would die as soon as the relic had passed into the hands of another. This relic was said to have been cursed by it's caretaker when the soldiers of the Crusade invaded the city of Jerusalem and committed wholesale slaughter, often for absolutely no reason whatsoever. The basic story follows the travels of a religious relic from Jerusalem to modern day London. The reading of this novel was helpful to me because it gave me a chance to sample the writing style of five different* authors. I used this novel to investigate the writings of a variety of authors.

The Tainted Relic by The Medieval Murderers