Always a pleasure to read Graham Brack's novels! This one is no exception: an interesting plot (this time about witches), excellent characterisation, and what I particularly enjoy in his novels, the brilliant and clever writing ! Such a sense of good humour (irony for the reader?), I love Master Mercurious and his way of seeing life, people and situations. A unique character, maybe my favourite one as far as mystery novels are concerned! Highly recommended!
I received a complimentary digital copy of this novel from NetGalley and I am leaving voluntarily an honest review.

Graham Brack's Master Mercurius mystery series is an absolute delight—and I'm always eager for a new volume. These novels balance mystery with humor. Set in Europe during the late 17th Century, the novels make excellent use of the religious tensions of the time—and Mercurius is in the middle of them. He's a fellow at the Univeristy of Leiden, which requires he be ordained as a protestant priest, but he's also a secret convert to Catholicism and is an ordained priest as well. This makes for complications that are simultaneously serious and ridiculous.

Brack's writing is the sort that has readers bursting into laughter and demanding to read passages to anyone else present. Much of this can be attributed to the character Mercurius as Brack has created them. Mercurius is both proper and iconoclastic, both serious in his faith and honest in the ways he finds temptation, both insecure and egotistical—and always ready to offer critiques at the expense of others (though only in the nicest of ways, of course).

In this volume, Mercurius is off with his university's rector to engage in a scholarly debate on whether witchcraft should be considered a form of idolatry. They're facing scholars from the Catholic University of Leuven and appearing before a group of judges drawn from religious figures on both sides of the Catholic-Protestant divide. The mystery doesn't really emerge until well into the book, when the first witness called in the debate is found bludgeoned to death in the library of the monestary at which the debate is being held. But the time before the murder is not time wasted as it is packed with historical detail and Brack's exceptionally high-quality humor.

If you aren't familiar with this series, I urge you to become so as soon as possible. The books can be read in any order, and are all delightful. I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

‘We have now come to the year of Our Lord 1686. I had been awarded my Doctorate (my real one, I mean; not the honorary one I got the Stadhouder to demand for me) but old habits die hard and people still commonly refer to me as Master Mercurius.’

We rejoin the elderly Master, sorry Doctor, Mercurius as he dictates his memoirs to his clerk Van der Meer. After a false start (after all, Mercurius is now eighty-three years old) he takes us back to 1686. While enjoying a period of relative tranquillity at the University of Leiden after surviving one of the Stadhouder’s (William of Orange) schemes, Mercurius is invited (read compelled) to join Rector Senguerdius in a trip.

A friendly debate has been proposed, on the sin of witchcraft, between the University of Leiden and the University of Leuven. Each university has a team of two. The scholars are to meet in the city of Maastricht, in the Emperor’s Hall of the Basilica of Saint Servatius.

Rector Senguerdius advises Mercurius:

‘One team will speak on days one and three, and the other on days two and four; no address is to exceed four hours.’

A jury of six (three members selected by each team) will decide the winner. The Rector wonders whether he should open or close the debate.

‘‘Surely you should open, Rector,’ I said. This was not idle flattery; this way if he made any good points I could steal them and incorporate them into my address. In the outside world this is called plagiarism, but in a university it is known as research.’

As part of his preparation, Mercurius researches local witch trials from seventy years ago. He is convinced that at least some of the charges cannot be true. But, on the first day of the debate the opposition produces a witch-finder who is adamant that those he charges bear the signs of the devil.

The following day, before the debate can resume, the witch-finder is found murdered in a locked library. Who killed him, and why? Naturally, given Mercurius’s track record in solving crimes, everyone looks to him to solve this one.

‘I stopped to think hard. A beer at Steen’s Inn would have been very welcome now. Partly because it would have helped me think, but mostly because it would place me about 140 miles from here.’

A locked room mystery with a difference? It is fascinating to follow Mercurius as he explores possibilities. Those present are keen to see the crime solved (after all, the debate was only meant to last a few days) and the murderer must be someone within the building. Yes, you can rely on Mercurius:

‘Crimes are not solved by syllogisms. They are solved by painstaking gathering of information, ruthless cross-checking of facts, and high-quality inductive reasoning. Sometimes a bit of luck and an unexpected confession helps, I admit.’

This is the seventh historical murder investigation in this series and while Mercurius cannot have lived forever, I hope Van der Meer has recorded a few more of Mercurius’s 17th century reminiscences of his past adventures for us to enjoy. I thoroughly enjoy this series and heartily recommend it.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Sapere Books for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

I only got this book two days ago and suddenly it is available to all the old fans of Master Mercurius as well as those that for some strange reason never read one of the now seven masterpieces by Graham Brack. Murder in Maastricht is in my opinion the best story in this series and also the most fun to read. I have giggled, snorted and even laughed out loud. This despite the topic witch the book deals in. I have apparently been a fan of mr. Brack for more than fifteen years now. It is amazing how time flies when you are having fun. This adventure with master Mercurius starts out as a friendly debate between protestant and catholic scholars in the Netherlands in the 1680s but soon it turns into a mystery that falls on our reluctant sleuths shoulders. The story is as always told by a now over 80 years old man to his trustworthy helper who puts all his recollections down on paper. It is astounding the amount of research that must be behind these historical mysteries and the author has never let me down once in his writings. The book is out in stores now, buy it, read it and enjoy. I also must thank Sapere Books and Netgalley for letting me read this one.