Sarah Hawkswood's Litany of Lies is a solid medieval mystery with engaging characters and a vivid historical setting. The plot is intricate, though it occasionally feels a bit slow. It's a nice pick for fans of cozy whodunits with a touch of history, even if it doesn't break new ground.

I love dipping back into Sarah Hawkswood’s medieval world whenever a new book comes out, they’re always a fun, entertaining read, and this was doesn’t disappoint either.

What makes the books so great is the ever evolving relationship between the 3 main characters, and the murder mysteries themselves are continuously brilliant.

Long may these books continue!

Litany of Lies is the 12th book in Sarah Hawkswood's medieval Bradecote & Catchpoll mystery series. Released 23rd May 2024 by Allison & Busby, it's 275 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links.

This is an intricately crafted and well engineered mystery wrapped around a meticulous and accurate historical framework. The characters are well established with realistic and believable internal motivations and agendas. The author is gifted at providing the necessary information without spoon-feeding readers (or drowning them with floods of unnecessary back story). The pacing is well measured and the whole is an engaging and delightful read. It works very well as a standalone mystery.

When the steward of Evesham Abbey is found dead at the bottom of a well-pit, Bradecote, Catchpool, and Underserjeant Walkelin are called in to untangle the circumstances surrounding the death. The language is fairly clean (PG rated) and the prose is very well written.

This is one for one to readers of the historical murder mystery genre, especially fans of Sharon Kay Penman, Ellis Peters, Candace Robb, and Susanna Gregory (and similar). Fans of well written character driven mystery from any period will find much to enjoy here.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Latest edition of Bradecote & Catchpoll mysteries.
Set in 1145 you see the relationship between the church and the local communities. The strain the Abbey has with the Lord Sheriff. Politics plays a large part. Undersheriff Bradecote and his Serjeant Catchpoll are despatched to find a murderer in Evesham. This simple task become a lot more complex. You are taken on a journey showing how life was so difficult in these times. The story takes you along at a at a great pace and is well worth the journey.
Thank you NetGalley and (publisher) for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

This was my first book by Sarah Hawkswood and I am very impressed. I love this time period. Even though this is book #12, I did not feel lost at all, starting so late into the series. These three characters work very well together. I particularly love young Walkelin. He's learning fast and has a very friendly way of getting to the truth. This book was a joy to read!!
Thank you to netgalley for the ARC. Opinions are my own.

I really enjoyed the exploits of our three sleuths as they investigate theft and murder in medieval England. The story is atmospheric, with a gripping narrative. A tale
of liars, red herrings and suspects to keep us all
guessing till the end.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy of The Treasures of Egypt. All opinions of this ARC are honest, unfiltered, and solely my own.

You had me at medieval mystery. While I am new to the series, this is evidently the 12th volume of Hawkswood's "Bradecote and Catchpoll's investigations." While I'm sure having some additional details from the first 11 couldn't have hurt, it didn't not hinder my enjoyment whatsoever. The story is set in 12th century England and follows, you guessed it, Bradecote and Catchpoll on journies of mystery and marvel. Cathpoll is your cerebral, wise and wordly Sergeant while Brandecote is essentially his assistant/student, despite outranking Cathpoll due to his nobility. In this adventure, they are investigating a mysterious death of a man who runs the Evesham Abbey. Is it an accident, is it a murder? It's worth the read to find out.

This was my first Medieval mystery with Bradecote, Catchpoll, and Walkelin, but it probably won't be my last! Litany of Lies is Book 12 in the Bradecote & Catchpoll Investigation Series, but can absolutely be read as a stand alone. I did not realize it was part of a series when I started reading, and though I could tell they were referencing some prior adventures, it did not take away from my understanding of the story. This particular adventure follows the undersheriff, Lord Bradecote, and his two assistants as they investigate the murder of the Abbey steward. As the trio investigates, more secrets are dug out of the town of Evesham, and some major corruption is exposed. The writing was extremely detailed, and contains lots of elements of 12th Century England - although sometimes this distracted a little from the plot, as a historian and medieval geek, I found it interesting. I appreciated the map of Evesham included in the front - I always love a good book map, and I find them particularly helpful in mysteries to give a visual to the space.

Thank you to NetGalley, Allison & Busby, and Sarah Hawkswood for the digital copy of this book!

A murder in Evesham brings Bradecote, Catchpoll and Walkelin to investigate another medieval crime. This time pride and greed are at play and the trio have to decipher who murdered Walter the Steward, not easy when he had been deceiving many in the town who all had cause to wish him dead. This book was a delight and I will be looking to catch up with more of this trios adventures.

Litany of Lies is a medieval murder mystery. Undersheriff (I think?) Bradecote and his sergeants Catchpoll and Walkelin are called onto the case when a local church's steward is found, apparently murdered, at the bottom of a well. What should be a fairly easy case quickly becomes complicated when they learn of an abundance of corruption and when two other murders get involved in the case, as well as Bradecote's rival.
This was clearly a very well researched book. Hawkswood even explains at the end that some of the more societally important people in the book were real, even though this murder never happened. It's a great fictional look into life in a small twelfth century English town, and more interestingly, it's a look at how justice was carried out in the age before forensics. That was the part that interested me the most, the incredibly old-fashioned detective work. I had hardly considered how one would go about solving a case without modern forensics, but our trusty detectives do so.
On the downsides, the detectives were not very interesting characters. Granted, this is the twelfth book in the series, so I would imagine that a fair amount of character building has been done leading up to this, but their personalities took a while to shine through, and then did so rather dimly. One of my favorite parts of any detective novel is the personality and flair of the detective solving the case, and these men didn't really have that. Additionally, the rankings of Bradecote and his men were muddy to me, as I mentioned above, not knowing if he's an undersheriff or just a sheriff, but again, this was probably cleared up in earlier books.
Altogether a satisfying mystery, good resolution, and really good medieval historical fiction.

This is the latest instalment in a series set in medieval England that I have really enjoyed from the beginning The plots are always complex and twisty but the period detail is what really makes it come alive with vivid descriptions of the time and places. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I liked the characters built up in this story and the arc. Ending was good, a lot of details that wrapped up nicely.

That being said, it took longer than I liked for myself to get used to the speech presented in the book. There were also a lot of characters to remember with small introductions and then some gaps in between seeing some of them again.

Sarah Hawkswood writes entertaining and fascinating historical mystery. I love the historical accuracy , the solid mystery, and the likeable and fleshed out characters.
This is another solid and entertaining novel that I strongly recommend
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Fun medieval mystery series -- I think I would have liked it a little bit more if I had started at #1 and not #15 -- but still intricate, interesting, and historically accurate. And I'll go back to #1 and check it out!

This is a great medieval mystery. When Walter, the steward of the Abbey in Evesham, is found murdered at the bottom of a new well being built, Abbott Reginald feels he must call in Undersheriff Hugh Bradecote, Serjeant Catchpoll and Underserjeant Walkelin to investigate what happened. It is a difficult case, because no one liked the steward who had forced families to pay extra to him when he was collecting the rents and then he claimed that some had underpaid thus skimming off money due the Abbey. There are many arguments between the palace guards and the Abbey as well.

The three investigators work very well between themselves, but they have a very difficult task. and soon another man is found dead, and the ferry man is attacked. However, in the process of trying to find the money stolen by the dead man, the three investigators manage to find the money stolen by the former steward, as well as solving another very old crime.

I thank Netgalley and Allyson & Busby for the ARC.

This book does a good job of recreating a historical world, yet it read to me like a police procedural that just happened to be set in the 12th century. The character development didn’t play a big role in the story.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC.

Every time a new Bradecote and Catchpoll title is released, I just want to skip about for a few moments tossing rose petals in the air. This series, set in 12th Century England, is currently in its twelfth volume—and every single one of them has provided an engaging, rewarding read.

At this point, there are three characters essential to each volume:
• Serjeant Catchpoll, who is (if I was forced to choose) the brains behind the series's investigative team—aging, worldly wise and weary, aware of the difference between law and fairness, and making the best of the situations her finds himself in.
• Undersheriff Bradecote, a very low-level member of the nobility and a bit of an idealist, who has learned a great deal in his years of working with Catchpoll. Bradecote may be higher ranking than Catchpoll, but he's smart enough to know that he is still learning from Catchpoll.
• Underserjeant Walkelin, the newest member of the team who started out as an easily flummoxed innocent, but whose perspicacity grows with each case.

In Litany of Lies, the three are investigating the death of an abbey steward. We quickly learn that our steward presented one face to the hierarchy within the abbey and quite another to the abbey's lay workers and tenants. The question is, who didn't want to kill him? Generations-deep feuds run among the crofters, which doesn't make ferreting out the truth any easier. There are tensions between the Abbey and the Sheriff, Bradecote's superior. And then another murder, clearly connected to the first takes place.

Hawkswood leads readers through this complex of possibilities deftly so that even as many new doors open, the central narrative remains solid. I particularly appreciate the care with which she explains the available research her novels are based on—along with the parts that she, as author, has chosen to create.

If you enjoy historical mysteries, you can pick up any volume in this series confident that you have an enjoyable reading experience ahead of you. And you don't necessarily have to read them in order. Hawkswood has an ability to build in context with a very light touch.

I received an electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

I like how you get a lot of different characters in this book which act together very nice for some reason. The writing style is great and I enjoyed this historical murder mystery. The details were very nice (and imo historical accurate) and the plot had enough twists to keep me interested!

1145. The Eversham Abbey steward, Walter, has been murdered. Hugh Bradecote, undersheriff, is sent with Sergeant Catchpoll and Undersergeant Walkelin to Evesham to investigate. Walter is deemed to be an honest steward by the Abbot but townsfolk know different. With so many possible suspects will they be able to find the murderer.
An entertaining and well-written historical mystery with its very likeable and interesting characters. Another good addition to this enjoyable series.
An ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

When the Steward of Evesham Abbey is found dead, Bradecote and Catchpoll are asked to investigate with one caveat, they are not to interfere with the local garrison. The Steward was unpleasant and was defrauding the local populace via their taxes so had a lot of enemies. However the investigation also uncovers issues between their Lord and the Abbot which implies that the garrison houses a murderer.
This is the latest instalment in a really enjoyable series about medieval sleuths who uphold the law in Evesham. The plot is suitably complex and twisty but what I love most is the period detail from descriptions to dialogue.