Smoke in the Wind [Paperback]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I have been reading all of the Sister Fidelma mysteries (in order), and I have enjoyed following her and the faithful Brother Eadulf in their many travels and adventures. In this book they have made an unsceduled stop in Wales and are thrown into investigating the mysterious disappearance of a whole abbey full of monks. The king of Wales has asked them to journey to this area and try to determine what has happened. When they arrive there they find a truly appalling situation. Unease and unrest are rampant in the area, and they also discover that a murder has been committed that seems unrelated to their investigation. But the further they get into the puzzle they determine that the two situations are indeed related and the plot is more devious than could be imagined. A truly delicious medieval thriller!

In the kingdom of Dyfed in what is now South Wales, Brother Cyngar stops at Llampadern, a religious community of twenty-seven brothers, expecting a good meal only to find the place deserted. There are no signs of a struggle but it looks like the brothers departed in the middle of their meal and all the livestock is missing. The traveler rushes to the Abbey of Dewi Saint to inform Abbot Tryffin. The abbot and the king of Dyfed, whose son is one of the missing brothers, prevail upon Sister Fidelma and Brother Eadulf to investigate the vanishing.

Fidelma and Eadulf agree to help though both realize the Britons who occupy most of Dyfed hate the Saxons. They stop briefly at the town of Pen Cair, accompanied by a judge, who is presiding over a murder trial. The two visiting sleuths help their companion investigate the situation until it is time to travel to Llampadern where they are kidnapped by outlaws who have a distinctly royal bearing. When they escape, they find the judge murdered. Fidelma investigates both cases with some very interesting results.

Peter Tremayne makes the culture of that period come alive in the mind's eye and snares the interest of the reader from the outset. Fidelma observes that mid-seventh century South Wales is very similar to her homeland since the Celts also settled there. This who done-it has many layers and the two cases have threads in common which makes for a brilliant puzzle that is almost impossible to solve. As usual a Fidelma mystery is always fun to read and SMOKE IN THE WIND is no exception.

Harriet Klausner

Before I even begin to offer an opinion of Tremayne's SMOKE IN THE WIND, please allow me a caveat: Mystery fiction is not my favorite genre of literature, and I am not widely read in it at all. In fact, SMOKE IN THE WIND may indeed have been the first novel of its specific type that I've ever read at all, so I have little with which to compare it, hence the title of this review (inasmuch as I'm essentially a stranger to mystery novels).

I found quite a few attributes in the novel that I can confidently place in the positive camp: Its medieval setting is fascinating; Tremayne's writing style is smooth, flowing and easily read; the continuing mysteries in the story line are intriguing and motivate the reader to keep going; and the length of 267 pages is certainly sufficient to contain a story that holds reader interest while not trapping one in the reading chair interminably.

On the other hand, I did notice a few characteristics of the novel that were a little bemusing if not somewhat disappointing. The thing that struck me most of all is that the structure of the novel is absolutely parallel with that of Agatha Christi's Hercule Poirot detective novels. (Wait--I said that I haven't read other mystery novels--and I haven't, but I have watched many of the televised and full length movie productions based on her novels.) First, one sees the hero, or, in Sister Fidelma's case, the heroine, interacting with his, or her, sidekick, Captain Hastings in the Poirot novels and Eadulf in the Fidelma stories. Then the reader is introduced to the mystery and is treated to its investigation by the detective Poirot or by the court advocate Sister Fidelma, with Hastings or Eadulf sometimes adding a bit of insight but more often lagging a few steps behind the sleuth and occasionally lending a hand when physical prowess becomes helpful. Most of the "action," however, is cerebral, and the solution to the mystery is reasoned out in Poirot's "little gray cells" or through Fidelma's insight. In either case, the reader finds the full explanation of everything at the same moment that the other characters in the novel learn it when Poirot or Fidelma actually addresses a gathering of those characters and explicates everything to them at the conclusion of the investigation. Seeing this structure repeated again and again in the Agatha Christi Poirot novels gave me a feeling of deja vu when it recurred in the Tremayne novel.

Some of the mystery in Tremayne's novel is, I feel, dissipated prematurely as we come to learn more and more of the "robber," Clydog, who, of course, turns out to be something more than just a robber. Well before the conclusion, one comes to realize that Clydog, and not Saxon raiders, is most likely responsible for the disappearance of the monastic community and that he is probably not responsible for the other mystery, the murder of Mair. The final revelation of Mair's murderess seems almost anticlimatic, wrapping up a loose end as it were, and it almost results in the entire episode involving Mair appearing like a red herring, placed in the novel just to obscure the primary mystery. Weaving two unrelated mysteries together is an interesting technique, but it may have been inevitable that one would predominate, making the other appear weak by comparison.

With both its strengths and weaknesses, I do find the story line interesting, and the ending does contain a few surprises. I suspect that mystery aficionados will find SMOKE IN THE WIND even more entertaining than I did, and I feel comfortable recommending the book to them as pleasant diversionary reading. From that standpoint, I would never argue with a reader conferring four or even five stars upon the novel. The three stars that I've chosen merely reflect the impact of the book upon a reader who has yet to develop a keen appreciation for fictional mystery writing.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 11 reviews  3.6 out of 5 stars