“Belladonna at Belstone” by Michael Jecks

"Belladonna at Belston" by Michael Jecks
1999, Headline Book Publishing
ISBN: 0-7472-6361-2

“Belladonna at Belstone” by Michael Jecks is a Medieval mystery. The story centers on an investigation into a murder at a convent. It was interesting to me how the religious people were portrayed. It was as if they were the kinds of people you might meet now, and yet, there was the placing of them back in time to Medieval times.

I suppose everybody has their ideas about how religious people are and the truth is much different than what we might suppose. The same seems to happen to folks in “Belladonna at Belstone”.

What starts as one murder escalates and it begins to look as if nobody is safe anymore. Everybody, it seems, at St. Mary’s had the motive and the opportunity to do these bad deeds. At the heart of the story are the two men doing the investigating, Simon and Sir Baldwin. The other key player in the story is Lady Elizabeth, the prioress of St. Mary’s at Belstone. She is being made to look the scapegoat for both the bad condition the convent is in and for the murder.

The twists and turns in this story were great. I really had no clue who the bad guy was going to end up being until the end. Good book.