Company of Liars

Categories: Fiction

Karen Maitland takes a familiar literary form–the tale of a group pilgrimage in medieval England—and gives it spooky little twist in her entertaining historical novel, Company of Liars.

A camelot (peddler of holy relics) reluctantly ends up shepherding a group of strangers toward the shrine of St. John Shorne as they all flee the terrible illness seeping inland from England’s port towns.  It’s a difficult journey, as months of rain reduce the countryside to starvation and angry locals seek scapegoats for the coming of the plague.

Besides the camelot, we have a courtly musician and his passionate young apprentice; a fairground trickster with a wagon full of wonders; a storyteller with a swan’s wing in place of one arm; a young painter and his pregnant wife; and a ghostly, eerie girl who reads runes and predicts an evil fate for all of them. 

Each of the characters has a secret, and the events of the journey expose each one in turn as misfortune and death snap at their heels like the wolves they hear in the night.

It’s a nicely creepy story.  Readers who enjoy period atmosphere and detail will find it interesting, and those who can’t resist ghost stories told around campfires will recognize every fatal turn in the tale.  And of course it’s enjoyable as a tribute to The Canterbury Tales, complete with the tales the pilgrims tell each other.