Review - "Dark Serpent"

Dark Serpent Hugh Corbett #18
by Paul Doherty
rating:☆☆☆☆
published: 25th August 2016
spoilers? no

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

If there's any author I trust to write a historical mystery, it's Paul Doherty. Like the other Hugh Corbett books I've read, this was a well-built, intriguing mystery, that had me gripped from the start to the finish.

Unlike the previous books, this one pits Hugh Corbett against a more powerful foe, the King of France. A French privateer vessel, ostensibly funded by a French duke, but in fact under the command of the King himself, preys on English merchantships attempting to cross over the Channel, knowing when the ships are due to sail before the fact. Simultaneously, the Templar Knights, who have been denounced and their order dissolved by King Philip, with the backing of the Pope, finding shelter in a leper colony are being murdered one by one by an unknown assassin. All this points to the French King, but there's little that can be done without evidence. Enter Hugh Corbett, returned to the position of Keeper of the Secret Seal and charged by King Edward II to figure out what is going on.

For a good half of the book, Corbett and Ranulf are in the dark as to the sinister goings-on plotted by the French king and his henchmen. Despite this, Doherty is well able to hold the reader's attention, by upping the ante at each turn. Corbett's point of view is interspersed with vignettes from his enemies, so the reader can see the plot against England evolving, serving to ratchet up the tension.

Once past the halfway mark, everything kicks into gear, and from that point on things seem to happen at a rapid pace quickly coming to a head when the killer is unmasked.

If there is one problem I had with the book, it was that it ended quite abruptly. It seemed almost like the story hadn't been wrapped up. One moment, it's the middle of the denouement, and Corbett is explaining to his audience the when, where, why, and how of the plot, the next, there's a blank page and the book is done.

The writing also felt a little stilted early on in the book, but that was when the stage was being set, and there is little that can be done about that with historical fiction, I guess.