Review of the Witch in the Well by Sharan Newman

I haven’t read many mystery novels lately.  While I enjoy a good mystery, I’ve really moved away from the genre because they usually don’t have much character development.  I was pleasantly surprised with The Witch in the Well by Sharan Newman, however.  This is the tenth in the “Catherine LeVendeur” mystery series by Newman.  I have not read any of the previous books in the series, stumbling on this quite by accident at the library, just picking it off the shelf when I was browsing one day.  It was a fun, quick read, a nice little mystery and a most interesting setting.  Catherine LeVendeur is a twelfth century French woman, and Sharan Newman’s background as a medieval scholar shines in this venue. 

Here’s a quick synopsis:  Catherine is a former novitiate, smart and sassy, now married to a Scotsman named Edgar with only one hand.  Edgar’s business partner is Catherine’s Jewish cousin, Solomon (although the cousin part is a secret.)  Her brother, Guillaume, is a Lord with many responsibilities.  They receive a desperate plea from their grandfather, begging them to come to his castle for help.  The entire family must come as all descendants are needed.  Her sister, Agnes, married to a wealthy German, meets them at the Castle Boisvert, and so does Catherine’s mother, who has been in a convent for the past few years because of mental illness.   At Boisvert, they discover that not a single child has been born in the castle in almost 20 years, and that is just the beginning of the problems.  There’s a murder and an invading army on the way and it just gets better from there. 

I’m quite eager to read more of this series, because I loved these characters and all their complex relationships.  Catherine’s siblings and cousins and husband and in-laws and servants all play critical roles in the story and their interrelationships add to the complexity of each character. 

The plot itself is typical of most mystery novels—unbelievable and forgettable.  (It’s not been a month since I finished the book and I had to skim through it to remember what happened before I wrote the review!)    Add in that the mystery is about a cursed castle and a spirit woman living down in a well and… You get the idea.  But don’t let that deter you from reading, because I did find the setting, characters, story and writing style very entertaining. 

Ratings  (For an explanation of my rating factors, please visit the Rating System Key page.)

Crack Factor – 8.  A great, fun, quick read. 

Enrichment Factor – 9.  Newman gets a lot of critical praise for being well researched.  As a professor of medieval studies, she should know what she’s talking about.  Medieval French life is well described through the eyes of these characters, so it’s quite a unique and engaging time and place for a mystery or two… 

PeopleFactor – 9.75.  I HATE finishing a book when I love the characters.  I am so glad Newman has nine other books where I can find these characters again.

Story Telling Factor – 8. 

Writing Skills Factor – 8.5.  For a mystery writer, she’s pretty fab.

Bad Ass Babe Factor – 8.5.  The female characters in this book are strong and smart, especially when you consider they’re living in Medieval France.  Part of me finds this fact a little unbelievable, but I wouldn’t want to read it if they were passive and boring, so for literary purposes, it’s perfect. 

Hotter than Adam Factor – 8.5.  Not many books get HTAF ratings---but this one will.  Edgar, Catharine’s husband is pretty wow.  He gets an 8.5 at least.  The relationship between Edgar and Catherine is supportive, loving and passionate.  Edgar is a serious tough guy, despite having only one hand.  (Apparently I have to read one of the previous books to know the details on that story…)  Solomon, Catherine’s Jewish cousin and Edgar’s business partner, also gets an 8.5. 

Total Rating:  8.6

I have my library card number memorized.

I think it a telling sign of some importance in your life when a number creeps its way into your memory. Like when you’re five and your mom drills your home phone number into your head.  My mom made a song out of it.  It was a good enough song that even my child hood friends remember my parents’ phone number to this day.  When you’re in high school, it’s the locker combination.  In College, it’s your social security number which doubled as your student ID.  (Although with identity theft issues, maybe they use something else now…I hope.)  As a young adult I had my bank account and credit card numbers memorized from typing them into internet access sites all the time. 

Recently I realized that I no longer needed to copy off my card when I’m on my local library website.  This dawned on me as I was logging in to the library website in the dark of my bedroom on my iPod to download an ebook.  For a split second I groaned, imagining that I’d have to walk all the way downstairs to get the card, tripping over sleeping cats, fumbling for light switches, and groping for slippers to avoid the cold kitchen floor.  But then I thought…maybe I can remember it…just let me just try…and then there it was, at the tips of my fingers.  I typed it in and a few minutes later I was reading my ebook.  It was just that easy to pull it out of my head, avoiding the trip downstairs, stubbed toes and dilated pupils.  So what significance does this have?  I’m not sure yet.  But I do think it is evidence of my addiction.

Once again, I’m falling down on my writing job.  I just have so many great books (and one dud) to read, I need to take a break and do some writing.  Here’s what I’ve been reading these days:

1.   Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver.  I just posted this review.  It seemed to take me forever to write this.  I think it’s harder to write a review when you really love a book.  Especially if you try to avoid spoilers, like I do.  I’ve been chewing on this review for two weeks, editing and deleting and more deleting, and I’m still not super-happy with it.  This is the same reason I haven’t reviewed The Pillars of the Earth or World Without End by Ken Follett, the Honor Harrington books by David Webber, or any of the Outlander books by Diana Gabaldon…I love them so much and I’m afraid I won’t do them justice.

2.  The Left Hand of Darkeness by Ursula K. Le Guin.  I’ve always said I’d take a book recommendation from anyone, but this has to be the weirdest recommendation ever.  It’s from a book character.  Grigg, from The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler, was a sci-fi fan and recommended three authors to another character:  Ursula Le Guin, Connie Willis and Nancy Kress.  I love sci-fi, but have only really taken sci-fi recommendations from my dad and he mainly reads military space drama.  So, I was interested to see if a) these authors were real and b) a fictional character could be trusted. 

Now I am forced to admit that not-real people CAN have good taste in books, sometimes even better than real people.  Ursula Le Guin was the only name I remembered while I was perusing the shelves at the library and I brought home The Left Hand of Darkness… “Wow” is all I can say.  I was very impressed and now I’m starting to work on the review.

3.  A Wizard of Earthsea, another Le Guin novel, which is the first in a two-trilogy set.  Once again, I’m getting obsessed with a new author and have to read a few other books by her.  I just picked this up and am only 50 or so pages into it.  It’s a fantasy book, rather than space drama, but so far it’s really got me.

4.  Dream Angus by Alexander McCall Smith.  This was totally random library browsing.  I’d read McCall Smith’s #1 Ladies Detective Agency before and enjoyed it, so I was curious about this modern myth re-telling  or so it was called on the jacket.  This is a very quick read.  I enjoyed it a lot and finished it in maybe 1 ½ or 2 hours. 

5.   Messages: The World’s Most Documented Extraterrestrial Contact Story by Stan Romanek with J. Allan Danelek.  This is a book club pick.  I would never ever pick up a book like this on my own.  With good reason. This book is horrible.  I’m about ¾ of the way through and it is torture to read this book. It is so poorly written and insipid that I’m suffering on every page, and yet I keep opening it up.  I guess alien abductions are still interesting enough to me to read when the book itself is trash.  And then to top it all off, the first meeting to discuss this book was Saturday and I get the café and no one from my book club is anywhere to be found.  Turns out there are two restaurants called The Omlette Shoppe in Grand Rapids and I didn’t pay attention to the address, so not only have I read a rotten book, I also wasted my time going to the wrong place.  Doesn’t it just go that way sometimes?

6.   Emma by Jane Austen.  My co-worker book club (which I have since named the “Bad Ass Book Babes” in honor of my rating factor and because everyone in the group is so awesome) was so intrigued by our last reading selection, that now we plan to read a Jane Austen book every other month until we’ve read them all.  I’m about 20 pages into it and I promised them I’d set it aside until they start reading it in October because they’re still only half way through The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and they’re starting to call me a book nerd.  I can’t be the only nerdy Book Babe, so I’ll comply.  This has to wait until October.

7.   The Witch in the Well, a Catherine Le Vendeur Mystery by Sharan Newman.  Another totally random library browsing adventure, I’m embarrassed to say I picked this one up because of the cover.  It has a very beautiful blue eyed woman on the front holding a cracked urn leaking water.  Anyway, it looked cool.  Turns out it’s one of Newman’s many mystery novels featuring Catherine LeVendeur, a 12^th century French woman, who apparently solves crimes.   I’m about half way into it and am really enjoying it.  But I’m peeved that I didn’t know it was a series, or I would have grabbed the first one instead. 

[As a footnote—I thought I published this post on Sunday 9/18/11, but I looked today and couldn’t find it.  So I updated it and published (again?) today.  But seriously—if any of my 5 faithful blog followers saw it between now and Sunday, let me know that I’m not crazy.]