St Mungo's Robin

Read this book in 2010, and its the 4th volume of the delightful "Gilbert Cunningham" mystery series.<br /><br />In this mystery Gilbert Cunningham is set the task of investigating the murder of the warden of St Serf's.<br /><br />He's found dead in the almshouse garden, as soon many suspects will come to the surface and the task for Cunningham to entangle this web of deceit and lies, and so to be able to identify the killer.<br /><br />While investigating this murder case, Gilbert Cunningham is hindered by his two sisters who have come to Glasgow hor his wedding to Alys, daughter of Maistre Pierre, the master mason.<br /><br />While various inhabitants of St Serf's are accusing each other of the murder of the warden, Gilbert will need to visit the Cathedral and the shores of the Clyde to find clues as tp the man's last whereabouts.<br /><br />When all seems hopeless in identifying the killer, it will come to Alys to produce the answer and solution to this murder, and for Gilbert Cunningham the apprehend the warden's killer.<br /><br />Highly recommended, for this is another tremendous Scottish mystery to this amazing series, in which Scots is interwoven within this story to make it real authentic, and that's why I like to call this episode: "An Excellent Scottish Mystery"!

Continue to enjoy the books in this series; the Scots tickles me; the tendency to accuse vociferously by the townspeople amuses; the growing relationship between Gil and Alys delights - and in this book ends in their marriage without detail. Detail continues to be the unraveling of murder mysteries. All good.

ST MUNGO'S ROBIN is the fourth in a series of medieval murder mysteries featuring a Glaswegian lawyer, Gil Cunningham. This was the first I'd read and I picked up the background with ease, so I don't think they need to be read in order to understand them.<br /><br />Unfortunately I didn't care for this book at all. We start off with twenty pages or so of background exposition - character setting, maybe - and then an intriguing murder takes place. Our protagonist investigates minor details and interrogates suspects but the problem is that this goes on for half of the book's length, without progressing the story in any way. Eventually, a couple of other things happen, but by that time I was too busy wishing the end would come soon.<br /><br />I appreciate the need for intricate plots in these mysteries, but I felt the one here was aimless and repetitive. There are far too many supporting characters, many of whom are extraneous to the plot. Each and every page is filled with dialogue as everybody seems to talk at length about everything, using Scots dialect which makes it fairly difficult to get to grips with. Our "hero" seems to go around in circles for ages, requiring other men to lead him, and he only eventually solves the murder when something else happens and the killer gives himself away.<br /><br />I could appreciate the slow pace if we had atmosphere, suspense, intrigue and danger to propel the story, but we never do. In other mysteries, the protagonists usually find themselves in the killer's firing line, but not so here - Cunningham is very much an outsider, always looking in rather than taking part. That destroys any possibility for excitement in the story. Similar, the scene-setting didn't appeal: I didn't get a sense of Glasgow and thought this might have been set in any Scottish city. Only the unwieldy dialogue differentiates this tale from others.<br /><br />I did enjoy the trial at the book's climax, which builds some much-needed tension, but in every other respect I found it lacking, leaving me frustrated from expecting so much more. <br /><br />One thing I do like is the cover art on this book - and indeed for the others in the series. I'd display them on my shelves just for that, so kudos to the artist!

This is another good Scottish writer of historical mysteries.<br /><br />I enjoyed it greatly partly because the writer makes no concessions to us English. It's all written in pretty broad Scots, and I really enjoyed working out what some of the words meant.<br /><br />The period is medieval, the setting Glasgow - a place I've only visited once. As with most books of this type, the characters are pasteboard, but give me enough period colour, a good plot and a place I don't know and I'm happy.<br /><br />I'll tell you one thing though: my poring on the internet revealed that the life expectancy of the average Scottish king was not too good.

I wasn't quite ready to get my head out of fifteenth-century Scotland after finishing <i>Gemini</i>, so I thought I'd read the fourth of Pat McIntosh's Gil Cunningham mysteries. Set in Glasgow, about ten years after the end of <i>Gemini</i>, these books feel a bit like a extension of the world of the Niccolò series; some of the same historical characters appear in both and I like to imagine Dunnett's characters living their lives just off-screen. (Accidentally or on purpose, there are also a couple of cases where character names and nicknames end up being minor spoilers for points in Dunnett where knowing a character's full name rather than just their nickname would have given too much away, so if you're reading your way through Dunnett and care about remaining unspoilered I'd recommend leaving McIntosh until afterwards; I also enjoy McIntosh more for having read all of the Niccolò books now and understanding the historical background.)<br /><br />In this book, Gil (now officially charged with investigating murders, after his earlier successes on an amateur basis) is called to a Glasgow almshouse where the unpopular Deacon has been found stabbed with no shortage of people who might have had a motive to kill him. He's also due to be married in a week's time and his investigations are both helped and hindered by family and friends arriving in town for the wedding, while he and his fiancée, Alys, are both suffering from pre-wedding nerves.<br /><br />I enjoyed this a lot - the series really seems to be hitting its stride by this stage, with the core characters established enough to feel like old friends now; Gil's investigations manage not to feel out of place in the historical setting while still allowing him to do things like estimate times of death from the condition of a corpse. I did spot a couple of clues well ahead of Gil, and had worked out the identity of the murderer by about two-thirds of the way through the book, but then it's always nice to feel cleverer than the detective!

Well, if you like to read about people standing in a room talking to each other in a variety of dialects, this book is for you! If, however, you feel mysteries should have a modicum of suspense and intrigue, this book may disappoint. I understand that this is the fourth book in the series, so there is clearly an audience for it. The character development is minimal, although I'm willing to grant that I may be feeling the distance as I haven't read the first three books in the series. Alys seems like a smart woman and a far more interesting human being than Gil Cunningham (the protagonist), yet she is given a ridiculous subplot (which I will not spoil for you here). I was torn in giving this two stars, as the last 20% of the book did seem more interesting both in terms of narrative and character development, but that isn't enough to give it three stars. I love medieval mysteries (e.g. <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/16291.Peter_Tremayne" title="Peter Tremayne" rel="noopener">Peter Tremayne</a>'s Sister Fidelma mysteries, Eco's <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/119073.The_Name_of_the_Rose" title="The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco" rel="noopener">The Name of the Rose</a>), and was looking forward to investing in medieval Glasgow, but I'm afraid this book really didn't give me that glimpse into history.

I love these mysteries set in 15th century Glasgow! I get lost at times in the Scots words interspersed in the dialogue, but the daily life I see in the stories fascinate me. This one ends with a rousing Scottish "trial." The interesting thing that McIntosh pulls off is allowing superstition to play a part in the story without having the whole thing collapse into hocus pocus nonsense. Every time I finish a Gil Cunningham novel I miss it for days.

I felt some of the old Scots quotations Gil voices to his nearest and dearest are starting to become a detriment to character development. It was also quite easy to solve this riddle from fairly early in the novel.

McIntosh's depiction of characters and Medieval Glasgow transport the reader back in time. By the time I finished, I was thinking with a Scot accent! <br />In this, the 4th of the series, Alys and Gil are planning their wedding. But Gil is called away as he is the notary to the Archbishop to investigate a murder in St. Serf's almshouse, a home for elderly clerics. His friend, and father of Alys, Pierre Mason, is assisting him. Pierre is knowledgeable in determining the time of the death as he had done in previous cases. <br />It appears that the poor murdered man was murdered elsewhere. But where? And what happened to his cloak and hat? Surely he would not go out without them. And the biggest mystery of all is why? As witnesses are called on, the facts do not seem to add up as to do the deceased.<br />Family members also add to the drama as families seem to do.<br />McIntosh answers why young women seek to join the religious establishments, at least in the case of Gil's sister.

Really glad I thought to get back into this series. I'd forgotten a lot of the background info, but that didn't really hinder things too much. <br />---<br />Lettuce Craft reading prompts 2023: a book featuring time