Medieval Murders is not what you would expect it to be . The murders are actually in modern day at a college, all all the deaths are from the English dept,medieval studies. These murders are made to look like suicides and accidents. Ray Elkins and Char Pascoe are the college police that are investigating the cases. I thought the story-line was good and I loved the characters.

You will never guess who did it but please read it, this was a good who done it. ( )

A skilled craftsman at writing mystery-thrillers, Aaron Stander knows how how to set a scene, introduce clues, suck you in, string you along and then reel you in. But perhaps most of all, he knows how to create and flesh out very real characters. And, with each book in which he has appeared (this is the fifth), Ray Elkins has become more real, more fallibly human and familiar. In the four previous books, Elkins was presented as a rural county sheriff in northern Michigan, where he grew up. But in the course of each of those books we learned a little more each time about his earlier life: that he'd spent some time in the army as an MP, had attended college and grad school and had taught in a university setting - all this before taking what would seem to be a step down to become a back country Sheriff.

In MEDIEVAL MURDERS, a prequel to the first four books, Stander takes you back to Elkins's earlier academic years, to a time when he was a departmental head of a criminal justice program at an unnamed large midwestern state university. But at the time the story takes place, Elkins is working as interim head of campus police and security following an apparent scandal in its leadership and ranks. Despite the change in setting, however, the pattern of the story is pretty "standard Stander." And that's not a criticism, because "standard Stander" is usually head and shoulders above much of the competition often found in today's police procedurals or mystery-thrillers. Stander's style harkens back to the days of Erle Stanley Gardner when crime-solving was less blood and gore and shoot-em-up and more cool, cerebral and analytical. Back to the time when most of the violence was off-stage, and the important thing was the unraveling of the mystery.

The focus in MEDIEVAL MURDERS is on the successive and "statistically improbable" deaths of three members of the university's English Department, all three women, all "medievalists." Elkins and his assistant, Charlene Pascoe (who is a former student of his, personally recruited by him, and very similar in many ways to Detective Sue Lawrence in the other books), have very few clues to go on in any of these mysterious deaths, but gradually gather clues and do their best to learn all they can about the victims and search for motives, etc. In the process, Stander paints a very believable portrait of campus life and, even more particularly, of the petty departmental politicking that takes place in any academic setting, with its various eccentric characters. All of this adds tremendously to the plot, as do other more personal details, such as the fact that Elkins's long-time live-in lover and life-companion has recently died of cancer and he is still grieving. And there are a few women who would like to help him heal and forget. These potential love interests are, of course, handled in the most tasteful manner imaginable, which is also "standard Stander," as are all the culinary and literary tidbits thrown in along the way.

The bottom line is this: it all works. And it works so well that this may be the best yet of the Ray Elkins books. Stander keeps you guessing right up to the last couple of dozen pages, where, as usual, the pace picks up and keeps you turning pages faster and faster. Sorry, no spoilers from me. What I will say is that this is, once again, a thinking man's mystery, and simply a damn fine read. ( )