Review: Caroline Minuscule

Caroline Minuscule by Andrew Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a bit of a curiosity, having read several of Mt Taylor's other series I bought this book because it was only 99p, but was (frankly) put off by the title - don't be. It's not clear when this is supposed to be set, I initially thought the 1950s but I suspect it was contemporary when it was written in the 1980s - doesn't' that make me feel old!

William Douglas is a mature(ish) student who chose the rather obscure Caroline Miniscule medieval script for his post-graduate studies (mainly because of its obscurity which would make any research easier to pass off as new). He is lackadaisically preparing to provide a translation of a piece of said Caroline Miniscule from a photo provided by his tutor when he finds the tutor's body garotted in his study. Rather than call the Police, William basically runs away.

Later William is accosted by a man called James Hansard, who he suspects is his tutor's murderer, apparently his tutor was to have translated the text in the photograph for this man and he offers William an eye-wateringly large sum of money to translate the script instead.

But then William reads that James has been killed and later receives a letter and a parcel from James' bank. The letter explains that James was searching for a cache of diamonds, hidden by a client, but the client has shared clues with James and another man, James suspects this man will kill him and has asked William, if that happens, to find the diamonds in his place.

The ensuing search involves a road trip from London to East Anglia and the fens. There's murder, double-crosses, and more.

Loved it, loved the ambiguous ending and I've already bought the second book in the series.

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