The Lady Chapel: An Owen Archer Mystery

In the summer of 1365, gentle Will Crounce, who portrayed Jesus in the Mercers' Guild Corpus Christi play, is brutally slain and his severed hand left in a friend's room. In Robb's second well-built, thoroughly researched historical mystery (after The Apothecary Rose), the Archbishop of York orders Captain Owen Archer to investigate this and subsequent murders. Owen, an expert bowman who lost an eye in the King's service, has apprenticed to his new wife Lucie, York's Master Apothecary, and is loath to tackle the Archbishop's task. But do it he must, and he is soon tangled in a complicated web of love and hate, sex and savagery, devotion and disillusionment-all involving wool traders, clergy, spies, musicians, mercenaries, aristocrats and even Edward III, his ailing queen and his scheming young mistress. Cardboard characters abound, in spite of the author's efforts to picture their complexities. But two in the cast are memorable: Jasper de Melton, a brave, canny little boy, and Riverwoman, an old abortionist. (Oct.)