Summary: A wedding arranged between two landed families between a powerful old baron and an orphaned girl in charge of her avaricious uncle and aunt fails to happen when the groom doesn’t show because he lies murdered along a trail.

The abbey in Shrewsbury is to be the site of a wedding representing two landed households. Baron Huon de Domville is a cruel, overweight man of sixty, as evident in his treatment of the poor and the lepers watching the procession. His bride, just turned eighteen, is Iveta de Massard, orphaned as a child and raised by an aunt and uncle, the Picards, who stand to gain from the lands her father held as part of the marriage bargain. Needless to say, they are protective of their “investment.”

They have reason. The beautiful girl has inspired the love of one of Domville’s squires, Joscelin Lucy, the son of another landowner. The couple arranges a tryst in Cadfael’s workshop. He stumbles upon them, to be followed shortly by the aunt, Agnes. He tries to cover for them but Agnes knows. She tells Domville who sends Joscelin packing. Before he departs, Domville discovers a necklace missing that he was going to give Iveta. It is found in Joscelin’s bundle. Though he claims innocence, he is arrested by the sheriff, but escapes. He eludes a manhunt, sheltered first by another squire, Simon, and then after near capture, in the leper colony of Saint Giles, helped by a mysterious leper, Lazarus, and a boy, who provides him with the leper’s garb.

Meanwhile, the wedding goes forward. In an interview with Abbot Radulfus, Iveta asserts that she is freely entering this bond, although Cadfael and Radulfus have their doubts. The bride is at the altar, but no groom. They learn that the previous evening, Domville had ridden out of the Abbey with Simon for a ways sending him back so he can go on for a ride down a forest path. A search party including Cadfael finds him sprawled out–dead. Someone had strung a cord across the path, and then when he was stunned and unhorsed, strangled him.

Given that Joscelin was openly at enmity with the Baron, and still at large, he becomes prime suspect and object of an intensified search. And Brother Mark, now at Saint Giles, has his suspicions of the latest addition to the colony. Cadfael, trusted by the Abbot to search for the true killer is in a race against time. Will he find the true killer or at least absolve Joscelin before he is found out? The question is, where did Domville spend his last night? The one clue is rare flowers in Domville’s hat. Find the flowers, find where he stayed and see where that leads. The other clue is that the killer was wearing a ring with a large stone, that in the act of strangling left its mark on Domville’s neck. And the killer apparently knew where Domville would be.

Peters continues to develop the character of Radulfus, who can use his authority in a commanding, yet never rigid or closed fashion. A new character replaces the capable Brother Mark in Cadfael’s workshop, the bumbling but good-natured brother Oswin, clearly a trial to Cadfael’s holiness! The bond and wise counsel between the leper Lazarus and Joscelin, and their care for the near-orphan Bran is beautiful to behold and we wonder if it is to be disappointed. Finally, we see the plight of women in Iveta–rich in inheritance but powerless to control it, a pawn of others. And yet we see her act with resourcefulness within these constraints. But will it be enough to reunite her with Joscelin and will they be able to prove his innocence? ( )

En la abadía de Shrewsbury se van a celebrar unos lujosos esponsales entre un noble y una hermosa joven. Su unión es fruto de un acuerdo que resulta muy satisfactorio para su tutor y el futuro marido, un hombre arrogante y desagradable, pero una injusticia para la rica heredera. Sin embargo, los preparativos quedarán interrumpidos a raíz de un brutal asesinato. Con su singular perspicacia, fray Cadfael se enfrentará a un caso cuyo desenlace sorprenderá a los lectores... y al propio monje detective.

In Bk 5, A marriage of convenience is all that matters between the bride's relatives & the bridegroom. An interested party, however, hopes to disrupt the marriage ceremony. When the bridegroom ends up dead on the day of the marriage service, the interested party hides out in a leper colony where he meets a leper who has more than a passing interest in the bride. As brother Cadfael probes deeper, he discovers a web of deceit & then another murder beyond the walls of the leper colony serves to expose the murderer. ( )

One of the few I missed first time around. Good as they always are. ( )

For slower paced, traditional mysteries that are very skilfully written, you can't go wrong with Brother Cadfael. When Peters created a crusader turned monk, she gave herself a large canvas on which to paint a variety of clever, interesting crimes.

The Leper of St. Giles takes place largely in and around St. Giles, the hospice for lepers that lies just outside Shrewsbury, but it's largely about the wedding of an 18 year old girl, sold off by her guardians for a large portion of her own inheritance, to a cold, unfeeling 60-something land baron who only bought her lands and is taking her on sufferance. Of course she's fragile and innocent and lovely and of course his squire is around the bend in love with her and incandescent over the injustice of her treatment. And of course the baron ends up murdered.

There's a plot twist in this book; a rather major one, but it's telegraphed early on, so that I knew long before it was revealed. It's a good one, but if Peters hadn't split the difference, the early guess would have ruined the story. As it is, Peters seems to have covered her bets and kept that reveal from being absolutely pivotal to the plot, making the ultimate solution a surprise, and a tragic one at that.

A few of the series characters readers enjoy aren't here in this book, but there are other characters that endear themselves to the reader. There's a bit of humor here and there too, making this a much more enjoyable read than the last, St. Peters' Fair, which was a good story but dragged. I'd be best pleased if we saw Bran and Joscelin again, though I'm not counting on it. ( )