One Corpse too Many

One Corpse Too Many came out in 1979, and it was the second of the novels about Brother Cadfael. It was written under the name Ellis Peters, and it was adapted for television by Central for ITV in 1994.

The setting is the summer of 1138, in the middle of the period of English history known as the Anarchy, when King Stephen is besieging the rebels in Shrewsbury Castle who have declared for the Empress Matilda. The castle falls, and the surviving defenders are hanged.

Cadfael, a Benedictine monk at the abbey nearby, is asked to help deal with the bodies, and finds that there is one more of them than there ought to be: a man who was murdered and hidden among the executed. He also becomes involved in helping a young woman escape the aftermath of the siege, and in working out what Hugh Beringar, the man she is promised to, is really after. The book was noticed on publication for the solidity of its historical setting, which is detailed without getting in the way of the puzzle.