Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 6: Dame Frevisse

Set in 15th century England, Dame Frevisse is a nun at St. Frideswide's, a small convent in Oxfordshire. She discovers a talent for solving crimes, many of which occur in or around the convent and the neighboring town, while later books in the series see her sleuthing farther afield, either while accompanying another nun on convent business or while abroad on her own business. The later books also delve more into current events, most notably the tensions that led to the Wars of the Roses.

Frevisse is related to Geoffrey Chaucer, and each book shares a name with one of the Canterbury Tales. She also interacts with some of her Chaucer relatives during the series, though usually as part of a subplot rather than the main mystery.

The series is attributed to Margaret Frazer, which originally was a pen name shared by collaborators Gail Brown and Mary Monica Pulver Kuhfeld. They stopped working together after the sixth novel in the series, with Brown retaining the Frazer name.