Dark Queen Rising

Christopher Urswicke, the protagonist of this middling series launch set in 1471 from Doherty (the Brother Athelstan mysteries), serves Margaret Beaufort, the mother of the future Henry VII, as her “personal clerk and leading henchman.” What starts as straight historical fiction, chronicling the House of York’s bloody path to power during the Wars of the Roses, eventually becomes a whodunit when Urswicke learns that four men were fatally stabbed in a locked room in a London tavern. When suspicion falls on his mistress, Urswicke has a strong incentive to identify the murderer or murderers. A narrative that treats the mystery as an afterthought, coupled with a surfeit of explicit violence (“The victim was no longer a man, just a sodding heap of gore”) and a solution that’s not one of this prolific author’s most ingenious, makes this a lesser effort. The innovative setting offers hope that future entries will be more successful. (Oct.)