Hostage to Fortune

By: Sarah Hawkswood

Narrated by: Matt Addis

January 1144.

Hugh Bradecote does not want his betrothed heading off on pilgrimage to the shrine of St Eadgyth at Polesworth, but the Archbishop of Canterbury's envoy and his entourage of monks seem Heaven sent as escorts, right up until they are captured by a renegade who wants his forger out of the lord Sheriff's cells; a renegade who loathes the Benedictines and kills for pleasure.

Against a backdrop of a hard winter and even a frozen River Severn, Bradecote and Catchpoll are struggling to rescue the clerics and Christina, before a psychopath does his worst, the lord Sheriff loses patience and Bradecote cracks under the pressure.

©2019 Sarah Hawkswood (P)2020 Isis Publishing Ltd

Fascinating

I love this time period and the author brings a great sense of realism to the narrative. This is the first Audible book as I have read the previous books. I truly enjoyed it and look forward to more.

Hostage

Well there are some very evil people out there and some come forth in this tale. A woman taken hostage with a lot of monks and evil prevails. Some hard to listen to

Good voice acting

In general I like this series, but with one, we spend way too much time with the villain. When I am interested in a series of detectives, I’m interested in their experiences. As it is, we have to bounce around Catchpole and Brandicote, and now we also get Christina’s viewpoint, and THEN we have the villain’s viewpoint, and frankly, his just isn’t very interesting and most of the time neither is Christine’s. I’d much rather killing and gore take place off screen, as it were, Instead, we have to spend a bunch of time in this book with sociopath who puts people through awful things, and then we have our main characters finding the aftermath of the awful things, and it’s all supposed to shock us I guess but it’s really just repetitive after awhile. I also don’t want to sit through some villain’s SA fantasies. The voice acting, however, is brilliant as usual.