A Plague On Both Your Houses: The First Chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew (Chronicles of Matthew Bartholomew)

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Gray followed him from house to house carrying the heavy bag that contained Bartholomew’s instruments and medicines. But the Plague was never far away and the theatres were major spreaders, so when it struck London again in 1601 and again in1603, the theatres, seen as particularly dangerous spots for the spread of the disease, were again closed.

Sorry for this bad review, but I'm at an age where my reading time is becoming less because of all my other commitments, and so I tend to prefer not to read series that contain a lot of titles. What will follow is a very eventful mystery into which Matthew Bartholomew has to face quite dangerous and deadly encounters from these conspirators, and after a few twist and turns and solving an exciting plot within a plot, he will be able to identify the culprit(s) of these terrible murders, and finally bring some peace into a Cambridge community which is plagued all around with the Black Death.Come on, old friend', he said, tugging Bartholomew's sleeve to make him move, 'or you will make me miss my dinner.

First, many of the characters' names are similar enough that if I had split the reading up over a week or more, I wouldn't have remembered who was who. This is the first time I've read one of the books in this series and I can't wait to start the next one. He unlocked the door to the mill and then went to feed the fat pony that he kept to carry flour to the town.

The book was sprinkled with historical details and interesting information, particularly about the plague. He jumped violently, as a large cat stalked past his hiding place, glancing at him briefly with alert yellow eyes. That's an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is—common decency. They had already lost two daughters in previous outbreaks and were determined that they were not going to make the mistakes that had led to those deaths. Very simply, the curse, said by a character Mercutio as he was dying means: ‘I hope both your families get sick and suffer’.

If there is a connection between victim and cause, then it lies in the predictable unpredictability and universality of death. This may not make for comfortable reading for people of faith, but honesty accepts Camus’s critique. I had a bit of trouble caring about the supposed motive behind the murders and found it overly complicated. These persistent symptoms following acute infection, otherwise known as ‘long covid’, have affected people worldwide. The revelations on the identities of the bad guys were interesting, but the main motivation for all the bad doings was very unconvincing and weak.As we are in the 14th century, it comes as no surprise that he is more successful in solving the first mystery rather than the second.

Rieux and Rambert the journalist conversing in The Plague by Albert Camus (Vintage Books, Random House, New York, 1972. But I still wanted to find out what mysteries were revealed and who was the murderer, and so I painfully ploughed ahead. The deep-rooted and pervasive practice of traditional leechcraft as it contrasts with the dawning science of evidence-based medicine is a common bone of contention between Matthew and the students he teaches at Michaelhouse College (now part of Trinity College, Cambridge), whilst the conflict between the students of Cambridge and the townsfolk continually threatens to escalate into violence. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.Editor Stephen Jones liked it so much that it ended up being published in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, his 1997 collection of the best horror of 1996, and the piece was also nominated for a Stoker Award. When plague struck yet again in 1606, Shakespeare and his company toured the English countryside, during which time he wrote Macbeth, Anthony and Cleopatra and a revised version of King Lear, which is now the definitive version. But there any resemblance to the comparatively warm-hearted Cadfael series ends: the tone and subject matter of the Gregory novels is far darker and does not shrink from portraying the harsh realities of life in the Middle Ages.