The Queen's man, Justin de Quincy, returns in a third story set in England and Wales. Eleanor of Aquitaine's oldest son, Richard Lionheart, traveling home from Crusade, is captured and imprisoned in Austria by the Holy Roman Emperor. An enormous ransom is demanded for Richard's release and Eleanor is determined to collect the ransom for her favorite son. Meanwhile, Richard's youngest brother, John, along with King Philippe of France, secretly plots to keep his older brother imprisoned. A valuable shipment of wool, meant for the ransom, is hijacked on its way from Wales. Desperate to recover the stolen goods, Eleanor sends Justin de Quincy as her personal emissary, instructing him to recapture the ransom.

Justin's first visit is to the scene of the crime in Wales, where he is offered the questionable hospitality of Rhuddlan Castle as the guest of Davydd ab Owain and his wife, Emma of Anjou. Davydd pointedly directs the blame toward his rival, Llewelyn ob Iowerth, the charismatic Welsh prince so prominent in Penman's novel Here Be Dragons. Given Davydd's motives, Justin immediately ignores the obvious solution, instead trusting his own hunches. Traveling between Wales and England, Justin follows clues that suggest a much more sinister plot behind the theft. Secretly, and with the aid of the infamous Llewelyn, Justin visits various places in Northern Wales, where he stumbles across the real plot.

Sharon Kay Penman deservedly enjoys a huge fan following based on the superior quality of her medieval English historical novels. Her comprehensive research of this fascinating period enables her to invest her characters with believable personalities and a very skillful mystery plot. Of the three Justin de Quincy books I've read, this has been my favorite. I've always been a fool for a Welsh prince!
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Lots of exposition dumps via dialogue with Bennett. Bennett himself seemed to be an altogether unnecessary character, tbh. I've seen some other reviewers mention that the author's earlier mysteries were better, so I will have to try those. ( )

The Queen's Man books by Sharon Penman are a really good light read. They are 'page turners'; the backdrop of Richard the Lionheart's absence from England, Prince John's scheming, and Eleanor of Aquitaine's struggle to keep the dynasty intact is interesting and well drawn.
As with her other Queen's Man books, although this is fiction you can be sure that the real background and the day to day living are accurate. The events and people (real and imaginary) all ring true and the story sweeps you along.
One perspective I really like is that although John is the villain who sets all the plots in motion, Penman has a soft spot for him. He is shown as very human though ruthless. This came across in her historical books and shows again. ( )

Don't you hate it when the story has a good plot and good characters but the story just doesn't reach the potential it could have had, it should have had? This was my problem with this story.

There's dragon shifters that didn't shift. A heroine who moved for a new life and had struggles prior to the move but she wasn't delved in to deep enough. A brief history of Arcadian dragon shifters - they're hung like a donkey and are super horny...oh and they are two parts of one dragon. If you feel a little stumped, so was I.

And the heroine who after fighting off the non-shifting dragon mens' advances just dropped to her knees at the sight of them playing fake 'Dom/sub'. The thought of the plot, great. The execution, eh, not so much. ( )

I enjoyed this and the previous book in the series more than I did the first book, "The Queen's Man." Part of that might have been because I had just finished Penman's trilogy dealing with Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine and was loathe to leave that world. However, I also liked it even more than the second book, "Cruel as the Grave." On the other hand, if this isn't rated higher it's because it suffers in comparison to both other historical mysteries and Penman's straight historical fiction. I love her "Sunne in Splendor" and "Here Be Dragons" and this just isn't in the same category. Penman even confessed in an author's note that she wasn't at first very comfortable with pure fiction with created characters and I think it shows in particular in the first two books in this series. I felt as if she had just hit her stride in this book. I do like her protagonist detective, Justin de Quincy "the Queen's Man." And this is mostly set in Wales which seems to bring out something special in Penman. But I thought the solution to the first two books far too predictable--again something I thought improved in this book--and I did enjoy all three. ( )