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The Green Man

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The Green Man

By: Kate Sedley
Narrated by: Robbie MacNab
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About this listen

 In the summer of 1482, an English army, under command of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, invades Scotland. They plan to win back the border town of Berwick-on-Tweed and to put King James III's renegade young brother, the Duke of Albany, back on the throne. Roger the Chapman, called upon to be a member of Albany's personal bodyguard, finds himself, by royal decree, a part of the invading forces.

But a series of sinister events, centred round the mythical Green Man, makes Roger question Albany's true motive for requesting his presence. Then, once in Edinburgh, he is required to investigate a murder - and begins to realise that his own life could be in danger.

©2008 Kate Sedley (P)2008 Soundings Historical Mystery Scotland Fiction Royalty
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I've enjoyed much of Sedley's "Roger the Chapman" series up to this point. Unfortunately "The Green Man" is not at all up to her usual standard.

Roger seems a shadow of himself: he makes ridiculous mistakes (repeatedly putting his life in the hands of people whom he has good reason to mistrust), fails to draw conclusions that are patently obvious to the reader/listener, and is significantly less likable than in previous books. There is none of his usual compassion and kindness to offset his brusque manner and his nosiness, and his attitude towards the female characters he encounters loses a lot of the sympathy that he's built up with this listener over previous books. He is not usually such a lout! The rest of the characters are either paper thin or lurid and unconvincing (or both), not helped by the absence of Adela and the children.

The plot is rambling and contrived, the narration repetitive and cliched, and part of the focus of the novel seems to be a clumsy and unkind attack on modern Paganism, religious tolerance and transgender people. This was rather a shock, given that Sedley's approach in previous books seems to be far more inclusive and humane. The ending, almost impressively, manages to be both sensationalist and dull.

This audio version is not helped by the narrator, Robbie MacNab, having an exceedingly peculiar and rather irritating speaking style, emphasising the ends of sentences oddly, and sounding totally detached from the book. For which, to be fair, I find it hard to blame him!

A serious disappointment

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