Review of Badger's Moon by Peter Tremayne

Peter Tremayne knows how to make sure his readers keep coming back for more of his work. One way is to write spell-binding mysteries rich with ancient Irish lore, customs and laws. Another way is to end a story with a cliff-hanger so shocking you’re forced to reach for the next novel.


He ends Badger’s Moon with such a cliffhanger. He ended Act of Mercy with Fidelma receiving a message that Brother Eadulf had been charged with murder, making the reader snatch up Our Lady of Darkness. I won’t put any spoilers in my review of Badger’s Moon but I made sure I had the next novel.

Badger’s Moon opens with Fidelma and Eadulf caring for their young son as they have agreed to a trial marriage. Fidelma drops the bombshell about the baby in the last sentence of The Haunted Abbot.

She and Eadulf are summoned to a village where three girls have been slaughtered, one each during the last three full moons. The villagers suspect strangers from across the sea are to blame. Their dark skin and strange language have stirred feelings of prejudice and hate. An angry mob appears at the abbey demanding their release.

Fidelma, in her usually snippy manner, relentlessly delves head-first into the investigation, demanding answers from everyone. Brother Eadulf becomes concerned as she is so focused on the mystery, Fidelma seems to have pushed their son completely from her mind. Both of them know she has changed but she refuses to discuss it.

Eadulf also worries that Fidelma is pursuing the matter of abandoned gold mines in the area rather than focusing on the seemingly ritualistic murders of the three young girls. Especially when a band of Ui Fidgente, enemies of Fidelma’s brother Colgu, king of Cashel, is seen in the area.

As usual, Fidelma plays her cards close to her chest and doesn’t reveal her thoughts until in true Tremayne fashion, she calls everyone together and delivers a sermon-like soliloquy for her conclusions.

Sometimes, Tremayne’s works are like reading a lesson book on ancient Irish culture with a mystery backdrop to make the education more interesting. However, both mystery and lesson in Badger’s Moon are interesting and exciting with an Agatha Christie-esque ending.

The Haunted Abbot by Peter Tremayne

I love a good haunted house story and although The Haunted Abbot didn’t linger much on spooky happenings at Aldred’s Abbey, it’s still a great mystery. Tremayne not only brings out the amazing culture of ancient Ireland but that of the British Isles including the Britons and Saxons as well.

Sister Fidelma’s companion in Tremayne’s incredible series, Brother Eadulf of Seaxmund’s Ham is a Saxon religieuse, which seems to be a contradiction in terms given their violent culture. As in the previous novel Smoke in the Wind, Eadulf is confronted repeatedly with the facts that his people are warriors and many of them adhere to their pagan ways. Although his has converted to Christianity, he is fiercely defensive of the Saxons and easily insulted with confronted by more enlightened peoples such as Fidelma’s Irish culture.

Eadulf and Fidelma travel through the Saxon wilderness toward Eadulf’s birthplace. He received an urgent message from a childhood friend, Brother Botolf to come to Aldred’s Abbey on a specific date and time. They manage to reach the abbey through a fierce blizzard just before the appointed hour, only to find Botolf has been murdered just hours before. While the bitterly cold weather takes a toll on Fidelma, Eadulf sets out to solve the mystery of his friend’s death. From the very start, he meets solid resistance from Abbot Cild, the very un-Christianlike head of Aldred’s Abbey. The cold, strict abbot has closed the community to all women and threatens to send Eadulf and Fidelma back into the bitter weather despite Fidelma’s illness.

There is also the ghost of a young woman, bearing a striking resemblance to the abbots’ deceased wife haunting the corridors of the abbey.

Despite the lack of evidence, Abbot Cild is convinced a local outlaw is responsible for the murder of Brother Botolf. He is equally adamant that Fidelma is a witch and has conjured the image of his late wife. Eadulf and Fidelma are warned from the very beginning that there is much evil in the abbey. They find not only evil but a sinister plot to deliver the Saxons into the hands of their long-time enemies, the Mercians.

To me, there is more than a passing resemblance of the plot in The Haunted Abbot to Smoke in the Wind, in which an enemy of the country infiltrated an abbey to use the brethren as pawns to draw the King’s troops into a futile battle, leaving the throne unprotected from its enemy neighbor. In The Haunted Abbot, an enemy of the country infiltrates Aldred’s Abbey to use it as a base of operations for nearly the same goal.

However, this novel lacks the brutality of the previous one and Tremayne focuses more on intrigue and subterfuge instead of violence. Also in this story, Fidelma and Eadulf advance their relationship as she agrees to become his ‘beloved woman’, which means she can enjoy all the benefits of marriage, although Eadulf has much more to gain than her. Besides this step to the next level, there doesn’t seem to be as much love and between them as simple companionship. Nothing has changed since the first novel, except that Eadulf doesn’t take Fidelma’s outbursts personally anymore.

Still, I’d like to see something more of romance, if something of the sort existed in ancient Ireland.