Sword of Shame is the second book in the mystery series written by The Medieval Murderers. They take an object with a past and then each tells a story related to the object using their own historical detective. The stories are linked because the later characters often know the suspect history of the object. In this version, the object is a sword with a tragic history that seems to cause deaths on its own. I am enjoying the series and will continue it. This one went from England to Venice with lots of good history and mystery. ( )

Too many different styles. I didn't care that much aabout the main "character", the sword, so I abandoned it. ( )

I have only recently discovered the writers collectively known as "The Medieval Murderers" even though three writers I really like are part of them, Susanna Gregory, C.J. Sansom and Michael Jecks. Other members are Philip Gooden, Bernard Knight and Ian Morson.

The set-up is a main theme (in this case the Sword of Shame) and each writer writes a chapter, a short story, using the theme and 'their' main characters (for example, Sansom writes a story about Matthew Bartholomew, etc.). This works out really well and leads to an entertaining book.

The main theme here is an Anglo-Saxon sword that seems to be involved in all kinds of negative situations, thus making people suspicious. It leads to all kinds of murder cases that our main characters can investigate and solve.

I loved the writing styles, and even though the stories were written by six different writers, in six different time periods (and also in a couple of different countries), they all flowed well together and made for a good book. I highly recommend it! ( )