Author: whatcathyreadnext

#BookReview Wolf at the Door (A Bradecote and Catchpoll Investigation 9) by Sarah Hawkswood @AllisonandBusby

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I’m delighted to be joining other book bloggers in celebrating publication today of Wolf at the Door, the ninth in Sarah Hawkswood historical mystery series.

Wolf at the DoorAbout the Book

All Hallow’s Eve, 1144. The savaged body of Durand Wuduweard, the solitary and unpopular keeper of the King’s Forest of Feckenham, is discovered beside his hearth, his corpse rendered barely identifiable by sharp teeth.

Whispers of a wolf on the prowl grow louder and Sheriff William de Beauchamp’s men, Hugh Bradecote and Serjeant Catchpoll, are tasked with cutting through the clamour. They must uncover who killed Durand and why while beset by superstitious villagers, raids upon manors and further grim deaths. Out of the shadows of the forest, where will the wolf’s fangs strike next?

Format: eARC (288 pages)                Publisher: Allison & Busby
Publication date: 19th August 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime, Mystery

Find Wolf at the Door (A Bradecote and Catchpoll Investigation, #9) on Goodreads

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My Review

I’ve become a big fan of Sarah Hawkswood’s historical mystery series set in medieval Worcestershire and featuring Hugh Bradecote, Undersheriff of Worcestershire, his assistant Serjeant Catchpoll, and Catchpoll’s protege, Walkelin. Luckily new books in the series are coming thick and fast with River of Sins published in November 2020 and Blood Runs Thicker in March this year.

Although the ninth in the series, I can reassure readers that Wolf at the Door can definitely be enjoyed without having read any of the previous books. The references to earlier events and to the back stories of the leading characters will help to bring new readers up-to-date.

As with previous books, Wolf at the Door has all the features of a police procedural but transported to medieval times: examining crime scenes (rather gruesome ones in this case), gathering evidence, interviewing witnesses and identifying possible suspects. Walkelin even tries his hand at the odd spot of surveillance.

Bradecote and Catchpoll make a great team. Catchpoll has an in-depth knowledge of their patch, the ne’er do wells who reside in it and possesses the keen eye of a detective. He also has a reputation for taking no nonsense. For example, when Catchpoll states his intention to have ‘interesting words’ the following morning with a suspect taken into custody, the thought of it makes several observers shudder and thank their lucky stars it’s not them. And we shouldn’t forget Walkelin, Catchpoll’s apprentice, who adds youthful enthusiasm and some keen observational skills to the mix.

Bradecote may not have the detective nous of his sergeant but he has the ability to use his status to gain access to people and places that would otherwise be denied, or to intimidate others. In fact, he and Catchpoll often use not so much a ‘good cop, bad cop’ strategy as a ‘toff cop, common cop’ approach with advantageous results. As Catchpoll grudgingly concedes, Bradecote’s ‘high-and-mighty arrogance laid on thick, works a treat’.

This time Bradecote and Catchpoll don’t just face the challenge of investigating a murder seemingly without motive but doing so within a community terrified by talk of wolves or, even worse, werewolves. Furthermore, Bradecote has a particular reason for wanting to solve the case quickly.

As the investigation progresses, there are tantalizing clues and false trails many of which seem to lead to nearby Feckenham Forest. The author keeps the tension building with some dramatic scenes as Bradecote and Catchpoll close in on the culprits and the reader discovers just what lengths they are prepared to go to.

Wolf at the Door is another skillfully crafted mystery that moves at pace and has plenty of period detail. I’m already looking forward to the next investigation for Bradecote and Catchpoll due to be published next year.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of Allison & Busby via NetGalley.

In three words: Intriguing, atmospheric, assured

Try something similar: The Monastery Murders by E. M. Powell

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Sarah HawkswoodAbout the Author

Sarah Hawkswood describes herself as a ‘wordsmith’ who is only really happy when writing. She read Modern History at Oxford and her factual book on the Royal Marines in the First World War, From Trench and Turret, was published in 2006. The Bradecote and Catchpoll series are her first novels.

She takes her pen name from one of her eighteenth century ancestors who lived in Worcestershire, and selected it because the initials match those of her maiden name. She is married, with two grown up children, and now lives in Worcestershire.

She is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association, the Historical Writers’ Association, and the Historical Novel Society.

Connect with Sarah
Website | Goodreads | Twitter

#WWWWednesday – 18th August 2021

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WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

End of SummerEnd of Summer by Anders de la Motte, translated by Neil Smith (ARC, Zaffre)

You can always go home. But you can never go back…

Summer 1983: Four-year-old Billy chases a rabbit in the fields behind his house. But when his mother goes to call him in, Billy has disappeared. Never to be seen again.

Today: Veronica is a bereavement counsellor. She’s never fully come to terms with her mother’s suicide after her brother Billy’s disappearance.

When a young man walks into her group, he looks familiar and talks about the trauma of his friend’s disappearance in 1983. Could Billy still be alive after all this time? Needing to know the truth, Veronica goes home – to the place where her life started to fall apart.

But is she really prepared for the answers that wait for her there?

Planet of ClayPlanet of Clay by Samar Yazbek, translated by Leri Price (ARC, World Editions)

Rima, a young girl from Damascus, longs to walk, to be free to follow the will of her feet, but instead is perpetually constrained. Rima finds refuge in a fantasy world full of colored crayons, secret planets, and The Little Prince, reciting passages of the Qur’an like a mantra as everything and everyone around her is blown to bits. Since Rima hardly ever speaks, people think she’s crazy, but she is no fool – the madness is in the battered city around her.

One day while taking a bus through Damascus, a soldier opens fire and her mother is killed. Rima, wounded, is taken to a military hospital before her brother leads her to the besieged area of Ghouta – where, between bombings, she writes her story.

In Planet of Clay, Samar Yazbek offers a surreal depiction of the horrors taking place in Syria, in vivid and poetic language and with a sharp eye for detail and beauty.

Recently finished

A Line To Kill by Anthony Horowitz (ARC, Century)

The Beloved Girls by Harriet Evans (eARC, Headline)

‘It’s a funny old house. They have this ceremony every summer . . . There’s an old chapel, in the grounds of the house. Half-derelict. The Hunters keep bees in there. Every year, on the same day, the family processes to the chapel. They open the  combs, taste the honey. Take it back to the house. Half for them -‘ my father winced, as though he had bitten down on a sore tooth ‘And half for us.’

Catherine, a successful barrister, vanishes from a train station on the eve of her anniversary. Is it because she saw a figure – someone she believed long dead? Or was it a shadow cast by her troubled, fractured mind? The answer lies buried in the past. It lies in the events of the hot, seismic summer of 1989, at Vanes – a mysterious West Country manor house – where a young girl, Jane Lestrange, arrives to stay with the gilded, grand Hunter family, and where a devastating tragedy will unfold. Over the summer, as an ancient family ritual looms closer, Janey falls for each member of the family in turn. She and Kitty, the eldest daughter of the house, will forge a bond that decades later, is still shaping the present . . .

‘We need the bees to survive, and they need us to survive. Once you understand that, you understand the history of Vanes, you understand our family.’ (Review to follow for blog tour)

Conrad Monk and the Great Heathen Army by Edoardo Albert (ebook, Lume Books)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

Snow CountrySnow Country by Sebastian Faulks (eARC, Hutchinson)  

1914: Young Anton Heideck has arrived in Vienna, eager to make his name as a journalist. While working part-time as a private tutor, he encounters Delphine, a woman who mixes startling candour with deep reserve. Entranced by the light of first love, Anton feels himself blessed. Until his country declares war on hers.

1927: For Lena, life with a drunken mother in a small town has been impoverished and cold. She is convinced she can amount to nothing until a young lawyer, Rudolf Plischke, spirits her away to Vienna. But the capital proves unforgiving. Lena leaves her metropolitan dream behind to take a menial job at the snow-bound sanatorium, the Schloss Seeblick.

1933: Still struggling to come terms with the loss of so many friends on the Eastern Front, Anton, now an established writer, is commissioned by a magazine to visit the mysterious Schloss Seeblick. In this place of healing, on the banks of a silvery lake, where the depths of human suffering and the chances of redemption are explored, two people will see each other as if for the first time.