Exclusive interview with author Peter Tremayne and a review of his 22nd novel featuring Sister Fidelma
Rating: 3 Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“I had already taken Fidelma to Rome in Shroud for the Archbishop, the second book in the series, set in AD 664,” says Behold a Pale Horse author Peter Tremayne, who was asked while speaking in Italy at the Abbey of Bobbio if he might bring Fidelma to Bobbio to solve a mystery.
“I said, why not? The local newspaper Libertá carried the headline ‘Bobbio in noir, perché no?’ So from then the idea of a story took two years and further visits to the area to germinate. I had Fidelma shipwrecked on her return home to get her to Bobbio.”
Behold A Pale Horse is the 22nd title in The Sister Fidelma mystery series. Our heroine is a strong female character in a time when most people would not expect a woman to be so. Fidelma is forthright and says what she thinks without thought that she may shock the monks. She starts thinking about Eadulf of Seaxmund’s Ham in East Anglia. This novel is set earlier than the last book. If you’ve read the other novels, you know that this will be her husband.
Fidelma is the sister of King Colgú of Muman, in what was the most southwestern and largest of the-then five kingdoms of Ireland. (Today’s Munster.) Fidelma is a trained advocate of the ancient Irish law system, called the Brehon Laws. Stranded by a storm in the port at Genua, (Genoa), she sets out to see her old teacher Ruadan at the Bobbio monastery, a few days away by mule. However, her teacher was beaten and is murdered. Fidelma needs to solve the mystery and make sure she’s not the next victim.
Tremayne, with degrees in Celtic Studies, says the only extra research he needed to do was on the Lombards, the Germanic people who moved into this area in the latter 6th Century and established a powerful kingdom.
Tremayne initially wrote four short stories in 1993 to demonstrate how a woman could be an advocate of the ancient Irish Law System in the 7th century, to show the type of law the ancient Irish had, the oldest surviving recorded North European law system. After these short stories were published, UK publisher Headline approached the author about extending the idea into a novel. The first, Absolution By Murder, was published 1994.
Tremayne has won many awards…an Hon. D.Litt from a London University, an Hon. Life Membership of the Irish Literary Society founded by W.B. Yeats in 1891 (presented by current president Nobel Literary Laureate Seamus Heaney), an Irish Post Award and the Prix Historia (France) for the best historical mystery novel of 2010.
Tremayne is currently working on the 24th title in the Fidelma series. The 23rd title releases in the UK this year and in the U.S. in 2013. There’s a new Fidelma short story being published by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine later next year.
Peter Tremayne is a pseudonym of Peter Berresford Ellis, a scholar who has written extensively on the ancient Celts and the Irish. He and his wife live in London. He was born in Coventry. His father was a journalist from Cork.
The 4th Féile Fidelma, a three-day international gathering of Fidelma fans, will be held in the Cashel Palace Hotel, Cashel, Co. Tipperary, Ireland, from September 7th to 9th, 2012. www.cashelartsfest.com
Behold A Pale Horse by Peter Tremayne. Hardcover, 384 pages, Publisher: Minotaur Books (July 17, 2012), Language: English. ISBN: 9780312658632 $ 25.99
