The Summer of the Danes

The beat goes on for Ellis Peters's twelfth-century Brother Cadfael, here in his eighteenth "chronicle." (The front cover makes it the seventeenth, but the back corrects the mistake.) Unhappily, this one is less appealing than the earlier novels, not because Cadfael is any less charming, but because the mystery he confronts is neither compelling nor, in fact, even a mystery. It's more a Welsh family feud, with a Danish invasion force standing by to intercede. Cadfael sorts it all out, of course, but longtime fans may be disappointed. Patrick Tull's workmanlike narration provides little help, as he often fails to distinguish among characters and tends to read description, narration, and conversation as if they were all the same. T.H. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine