The Heretic's Creed

Starred review from November 7, 2016
Buckley’s outstanding 14th Tudor mystery (after 2015’s A Perilous Alliance) takes Ursula Blanchard, the intelligent, resourceful gentlewoman with a secret family connection to Elizabeth I, to an unofficial convent in a remote corner of the Yorkshire moors. An ostensible diplomatic visit to the court of the child king of Scotland, James VI, plays cover for Blanchard’s investigation of Stonemoor House, where two men have gone on the queen’s business before—and never returned. Buckley manages not only to imbue the would-be convent, reached in the midst of a snowstorm no less, with mystery and menace but also to dramatize how difficult it was for a woman to live an independent life in the 1570s, whether she be Protestant widow or aristocratic Catholic spinster. It was a time when religious calling was hopelessly tangled with political loyalty, and people could easily mistake an herbal cure for a witch’s potion. Still, there are no caricatured villains in this layered entry. Buckley draws even the most minor characters with subtlety and skill, making the dramatic conclusion that much more satisfying.

December 1, 2016

In her 14th series outing (after A Perilous Alliance), Ursula Blanchard is sent to Yorkshire to acquire a medieval manuscript currently in the possession of a group of recusant nuns. Previous attempts to secure the book ended in the disappearance of the messengers.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2016
Buckley, the author of 13 Ursula Blanchard mysteries, takes a break from her Tudor series with a leisurely historical romance tinged with mystery. Set in the early days of the nineteenth century, this novel features a pair of star-crossed lovers who endure many years and many hardships before they are eventually united. Groomed to marry a neighboring landowner's son, English farmer's daughter Peggy Shawe falls immediately under the spell of dashing smuggler's son Ralph Duggan. In order to thwart their romance, Peggy's disapproving mother, in a remarkably unbelievable twist, sends her to live with the Duggans in order to convince her of the error of her ways. When murder and fate intervene, dispatching Ralph and his brother across the Atlantic to Antigua, a heartbroken Peggy reluctantly agrees to marry plodding James Bright. Of course, she continues to pine for Ralph, and when destiny and determination finally bring them together, the crime is solved and they find the flame of love has flickered, but endured.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

December 15, 2016
In this entry in Buckley's (A Traitor's Tears, 2014) long-running historical mystery series, Ursula Blanchard, illegitimate half-sister and former lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, continues to wend her way through the tricky political, social, and familial quagmires imposed on her by birth, breeding, and station. At the behest of Sir William Cecil, lord treasurer and royal spymaster, Ursula undertakes a mysterious, two-pronged mission. Tasked to deliver a secret missive to Edinburgh, where intricate plots continue to swirl about Elizabeth's rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, and to recover an ancient manuscript housed in a rogue convent in the Yorkshire moors, she reluctantly travels northward. When she discovers that two earlier emissaries have vanished, it becomes increasingly clear that her assignment is not as straightforward as it initially seemed. Peril and intrigue lurk everywhere on the windswept moors as Ursula walks a fine line between danger and duty in another of Buckley's intelligent, historically accurate Elizabethan-era whodunits.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

November 1, 2016
A spy in skirts serves in Her Majesty's secret service, Tudor style.In February 1577, 40-ish, thrice-widowed Ursula Blanchard is giving a wedding for her young ward when she receives an important guest: William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth's Lord Treasurer and assigner of secret errands on behalf of the queen. Unlike past tasks, he assures Ursula, this one poses no danger to her. She has merely to go to Edinburgh and deliver a highly confidential letter, thence to a remote Yorkshire manor, Stonemoor House, to collect a rare book of astronomical observations. As a former lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, who is also her half sister, the product of Henry VIII's infidelity when he was married to Anne Boleyn, Ursula can hardly decline, but she can ask Burghley why he isn't sending a Queen's Messenger. It turns out Burghley has already dispatched two--including Ursula's good friend and one-time suitor--but they never returned. Despite this less than reassuring news and her resident soothsayer's warning, the first part of Ursula's errand goes smoothly enough. In fact, it takes Burghley longer to explain the letter, which concerns a plot surrounding Mary, Queen of Scots, than for Ursula to deliver it. The next task requires Ursula and her retinue to brave a blizzard to get to Stonemoor, an informal convent. During their stay, Ursula's personal tirewoman Fran discovers a secret sign that at least one of the Queen's Messengers has been there and was in danger. So Ursula and her friends are more than happy to pay for the book and head home. But a strange fact about the book (quite apart from the curse on it) and a piece of gruesome evidence make Ursula turn her party back to Stonemoor and the danger she's feared all along. Buckley's storied heroine (A Perilous Alliance, 2015, etc.) has all too little chance to prove herself in her 14th adventure: too many of the critical scenes are either narrated to her or take place offstage.

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