Ever since I read "A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver" by E.L. Konigsburg I've had a thing for Eleanor of Aquitaine. Yep, I've carried a torch for the woman since 1973 when this book first came out. The cover at the left is a new version, the original looks more like a medieval tapestry.
Fourteen years or so years ago, when I was ginormously pregnant with child number one, I discovered Sharon Kay Penman. A kindred soul if their ever was one. She too has a thing for Eleanor and the whole crazy Plantagenet brood. Her books on Henry, Richard, John etc are massive historical fiction efforts complete with boatloads of characters, intrigue, romance and the kitchen sink. A few years back she penned a few mysteries starring a young man in the employ of an aged Eleanor. Justin de Quincy rode onto the pages, the bastard son of an English Bishop, who has a nose for solving mysteries and avoiding death.
For some unknown reason, I missed reading her 2006 effort "Prince of Darkness," the latest book in the Justin mystery series, when it debuted. I remedied that problem this weekend. Although Eleanor does not appear until the end of the book, Justin's latest escapade on her behalf involves clearing that naughty Prince John from implication in a plot to keep his brother Richard rotting in a German castle.
Just not sure what it is about this time period that has kept me searching for books set during the Eleanor years. If I believed in it, I'd say some reincarnation/channeling stuff is involved. And on a totally different track, I missed Saturday's episode of Robin Hood on BBC America. Have to scope out the ON Demand episode and settle in for my weekly dose of those Sherwood Forest denizens.
Vacation starts in T minus 5 days and counting.
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