In 1137 the ambitious head of Shrewsbury Abbey has decided to acquire the remains of Saint Winifred for his Benedictine order. Brother Cadfael is part of the expedition sent to her final resting place in Wales, where they find the villagers passionately divided by the Benedictines’ offer for the saint’s relics. 
Canny, wise and all too worldly, Cadfael isn’t surprised when this taste for bones leads to bloody murder. The leading opponent to moving the grave has been shot dead with a mysterious arrow, and some say Winifred herself dealt the blow. Brother Cadfael knows that a carnal hand did the killings, but he doesn’t know that his plan to unearth a murderer may dig up a case of love and justice, where the wages of sin may be scandal – or his own ruin.

‘A Morbid Taste For Bones‘ was excellent: a gripping story with strong characters and powerful narration. 

It was a strong start to a unique series, introducing an unusual and fascinating character at home in a world that I know very little about. 

Although the book is fifty-seven years old, it still feels both fresh and relevant. 

I liked the way it balanced the worldly issues of pride, ecclesiastical and secular authority, nationalism, clan structures and gender rules with deep religious belief, an acceptance of the possibility of the miraculous intervention of God and the Saints in the affairs of men and the risk of eternal damnation or the blessing of a physical assumption into heaven. 

Brother Cadfael, a sixty-year-old physically robust, Welshman who was a Crusader and Corsair before his vocation called him to live a cloistered life of worship as a Benedictine monk, is the embodiment of this balance between the worldly and the spiritual. His experience of the world, his faith in God and his Welsh sense of justice shape the action of the book and the reader’s perception of England and Wales as they were in 1137. 

The setting of the book is very familiar to me I was raised a Catholic in the Diocese of Shrewsbury. As a child, I was taken over the border to Flintshire in Wales to visit St Winefride’s Shrine in Holywell where my mother collected small bottles of water from the saint’s well. One of the things I enjoyed about the book was Ellis Peter’s ability to roll back the centuries and show me these places and the people who lived in them as they were nearly 900 years ago. The world she presented felt complex and real, as did the people who lived in it. I particularly enjoyed the subtle ways in which the Welsh pushed back against the entitled mindset of the English/Norman Prior and how they treated Cadfael as one of their own while seeing the rest as Outlanders. 

The plot was more complicated and much more ingenious than I had expected. It kept me engaged and it made me smile. Although the plot involves a murder which triggers a strong desire for bloody revenge and it confronts some of the social issues and problems of the time, this remains a hopeful and positive book, without becoming overly sentimental. Cadfael’s hope is sustained by his willingness to shape events in a way that prevents both ecclesiastical and secular authorities from doing the wrong thing.

One thing that surprised and pleased me about a book set in 1137 and focussing on monks, was that the plot is moved forward in crucial ways by the actions and characters of two strong women. 

Finally, my enjoyment of the book was enhanced by Stephen Thorne’s wonderful narration. He has a deep, strong voice and he gave Cadfael a compelling and appropriate Welsh accent. His pacing was perfect and I could always tell which character was speaking. I’m very pleased that he is the narrator of the next two Cafael books, ‘One Corpse Too Many‘ and ‘Monk’s Hood‘.

A SHORT DIGRESSION ON THE ABSENCE OF CADFEAL AUDIOBOOKS AND AN APPEAL TO AUDIBLE STUDIOS.
Earlier this month, I dipped in to the Chronicles Of Brother Cadfael at random, reading ‘The Devil’s Novice’, an audiobook that was available for free. As an audiobook, it was a disappointment because of a poor production standards and the decision to use a narrator with a limited range of male voices, but I enjoyed the story and so I decided to try the series from the audiobook omnibus ‘The Adventures Of Brother Cadfael‘ narrated by Derek Jacobi.
Then, before I could try them, it was pointed out to me that the six novels in the Jacobi collection are abridged versions, made in 1998 a couple of years after he starred in the ‘Cadfael’ TV series.
I admire Jacobi as an actor but he’s so patrician that I struggle to see him as the robust, martial, worldly, Welshman that Ellis Peter’s wrote. I’m also not a fan of abridging novels.
So, I went lookig for better audiobooks that would take me through the Chronicles from the beginning to the end.
I couldn’t find one.
Nine of the twenty-one Brother Cadfael novels are not currently available as audiobooks in the UK, five of them are only available as Jacobi’s abridged versions, three are narrated by Vanessa Benjamin, whose performance in ‘The Devil’s Novice’ wasn’t inspiring and one is narrated by Johanna Ward and was recorded more than twenty years ago with a sound quality best suited to cassette tape (which I remember well and have no desire to return to).
I was on the verge of thinking that my Cadfael reading would all have to be done as ebooks when I found unabridged audiobook versions of the first three books narrated by Stephen Thorne in 2011 and I finally had audiobooks worth listening to.
AUDIBLE STUDIOS, IF YOU’RE LISTENING, PLEASE MARK 2027, THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST CADFAEL BOOK, BY RELEASING NEW UNABBRIGED AUDIOBOOKS WITH GREAT NARRATORS AND MODERN PRODUCTION STANDARDS.