Review: Monk's Hood

I recently finished Book 3 of the Cadfael series. I don't think it was as good as the first two two books in the series, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Part of this may be due to the lack of any real action in the book. The murder happens, so Cadfael investigates, overcomes some minor obstacles, and solves the case. I have to say also, that my first inclination of who the murderer was right, and I only wavered from that conviction for a short while during the book. What does 'happen' in this book is that we learn quite a bit more about Cadfael's past, since he encounters someone from that past. Character development is rarely very exciting, but it does make the series as a whole richer, so I'm not complaining.

The one thing to talk about this book, and I'm trying not to give too much of the book away as I do it, is Cadfael's intervention in justice. In the second book, Cadfael had taken a bit of the law into his own hands, but in the end, the workings of medieval justice were played out. In this book, Cadfael judges the murder, not necessarily excusable, but understandable, and the murderer to be undeserving of the penalty of the law (which would have been death, particularly given the premeditated nature of the murder). So, Cadfael essentially imposes his own punishment (or perhaps 'penance' would be a better word) on the murderer and lets him go. It's one thing to hide a suspect that you are convinced is innocent, and maybe even help him escape, as has happened in all the books thus far, but it is different when you are dealing with the proven guilty. The reader is supposed to feel good about this resolution because the murderer is indeed sincere in his repentance, and the good he can do will probably outweigh his evil deed, but we must conveniently forget that a man was murdered - perhaps not the best of men, but definitely far from the worst of men either.

This strikes me as the author imposing something of her own modern views of justice upon the story, rather than being true to her setting and characters. The author already has this problem with Cadfael the character anyway, as he always come off as a bit less than medieval, and a little too modern in his tolerant and unjudgemental attitude. One of the hallmarks of this series is its authentic medieval setting, but sometimes it feels as if we are following the story of a sympathetic detective from Scotland Yard who has been tossed through a time machine, rather than a former crusader and current monk. Peters is careful to keep him completely dedicated to his monatic vows, which I applaud as being wholly in keeping with the character as I understand him, and his experiences in the East certainly could have given anyone greater perspective on their world (although most who went on crusade, especially the first one, would hardly have changed their views about the world, but rather would have reinforced many of them from the experience). I'll be interested to see whether this trend continues in future books.