The period detail seems realistic, if not overly detailed, and the setting is well drawn, if not hugely evocative, even for someone that knows the areas being written about. It was a perfectly pleasent and enjoyable historical crime novel, but with nothing to really mark it out as an outstanding example of the genre. This book is the third in a long running series featuring the bailiff and his knight friend, set in the Westcountry, but this is the first one I have read. They begin to investigate the crime, uncovering as they do lots of simmering resentments between the two groups that gave plenty of people a motive for murder. Already on the scene, handily, to investiagte the claims of the wealthy landowner over his former servant, are the bailiff of Lydford, Simon Puttock, and his friend the ex-knight Templar Sir Baldwin Furnshill. This man is later found hanged in one of the twisted, stunted woods that locals claim is inhabited by Crockern, the evil spirit of the moors. A wealthy landowner has had one of his villeins run away, and claim sanctuary amongst the community of tin miners that work the land under the protection of the King. More specifically, the plot of the book focuses on the tensions that existed on Dartmoor amongst the different groups of people that lived and worked there. It is also set in Medieval times, which is also quite unusual, even within the genre of historical crime fiction to which this book belongs. I was drawn to this book becuae it is set in the South West of England, where I live, which is a place not often rendered in fiction.
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