Murdere and mayehemme

I'm so pleased to have found a copy of Ellis Peters' Saint Peter's Fair (the fourth Brother Cadfael medieval whodunnit) when I was in Halifax last week, because all of my attempts to find it in Toronto failed. I had a customer at the store who also likes Ellis Peters tell me knowingly and somewhat pityingly that Saint Peter's Fair can be quite difficult to find. I may have felt a measure of panic at this grim proclamation, but I tried to play it cool.

It took 3 bookshops in Hali, but I found it and then read it in a day and a half. As always, Peters' writing and story-telling were excellent; indeed, Saint Peter's Fair was rather more excitingly action-packed than the first three Cadfael books were - and the first in this series to see Brother Cadfael incorrectly read someone's personality, and to almost fatal effect! It was very good.

In some ways, the denouement was rather too exciting for me, for I was reading it while flying home to Toronto and my attempts to finish this novel were continually interrupted by the worst air turbulence I've ever experienced. People's water bottles went flying up into the air when we made our first dramatic and unexpected drop and a few people screamed. It went on like this, off and on, for about an hour and while most people were very quiet about it, they were generally so (within my view, anyway) in a determined kind of way. One guy was trying to pray or meditate. The woman next to me was crying silently but with the utmost despair. I was aggressively believing in the plane's ability to remain aloft, for someone I know who hates flying once told me that he was certain planes only flew because everyone on board believed they could and would. And nothing whatsoever from the flight crew except we should put our seat belts on! Bastardoes!

I made it back alive, obviously, with no crashing involved. It didn't make me eager to fly anywhere again though, in spite of the fact that my trip to Halifax was both relaxing and lucrative in terms of the stack of books I bought myself.

I'm glad to be back, to see my hubby, our catties and bunnies, and the cherry blossoms which bloomed in my absence, and to begin the next book in my French Literature Project! So far, Chretien de Troyes is rocking my world.