In the summer of 1138, war between King Stephen and the Empress Maud takes brother Cadfael from the quiet world of his garden to the bloody battlefield. Not far from the safety of the Abbey walls, Shrewsbury Castle falls, leaving its 94 defenders loyal to the empress to hang as traitors. With a heavy heart, Brother Cadfael agrees to bury the dead, only to make a grisly discovery: 95 bodies lie in a row, and the extra corpse tells Cadfael that the killer is both clever and ruthless. 
But one death among so many seems unimportant to all but the good Benedictine. He vows to find the truth behind disparate clues: a girl in boys’ clothing, a missing treasure, and a single broken flower – the tiny bit of evidence that Cadfael believes can most easily expose a murderer’s black heart…

‘One Corpse Too Many‘ is a more secular book than ‘A Morbid Taste For Bones’. The story is dominated by the consequences of the fall of Shrewsbury, who supported the Empress Maud, to King Henry in 1138. Cadfael’s Benedictine Abbey is buffered from the secular struggle until the Abbot asks for permission to bury ninety-four defenders of the fallen city who have been executed by hanging and thrown into a ditch outside the walls. Cadfeal, who is sent to manage the gruesome task, finds one corpse too many and sets out to find the murderer. In hunting the murderer, Cadfeal finds himself involved in political intrigue and has to pitch his cunning against that of Hugh Beringar, the newly appointed Deputy Sheriff of Shropshire.

I liked the matter-of-fact way this story displayed the brutality of the times, the capriciousness of Kings and the bloody reality of trial by combat. 

As in the first book, ‘One Corpse Too Many‘ featured strong women who shaped the story, this time with some ingenious twists that made me smile.

There were some very strong scenes in the book that brought into focus life in 1138 as lived by beggars, women and nobles navigating royal politics at a time of civil war and showed the impact of a belief in God in terms of the rights of Kings and the Church.

I enjoyed the war of wits between Beringar and Cadfael but I thought it went on for too long at the end. The conclusion to the two sets of personal stories was a little too Happy Ever After for me.

I recommend the audiobook version of ‘One Corpse Too Many‘. Stephen Thorne’s narration increased my enjoyment of the book.