As with Sarah Matthias’ debut this has some brilliantly described characters that you can visualise completely in your mind as if they were standing with you, not least Tom Fletcher himself. It’s also a terrific adventure story, rich in quirky historical detail and anecdote. A fantastic unputdownable historical whodunit. Her website, sarahmatthias.co.uk, offers a Cure of the Month, currently a peppermint and rosemary concoction designed to get rid of colds.
What the author said: "I wrote my second book, Tom Fletcher and the Angel of Death, for my children too. However, by now I had a publisher for my first book so I was much more disciplined in the way that I wrote. I still wrote it for my children but I had much more of an idea about how long I wanted it to be. My son, Charlie, read every chapter ‘hot off the press’ and is a really great critic. In fact, I am now writing my third book and he is reading it chapter by chapter and still keeping me to the mark."
When Brother Benedict is found dead in Saint Wilfred’s Beast House, eaten by Delilah, the lion he kept to terrorise the people of St Agnes-next-the Sea, there is no shortage of suspects.
But when the wrong man is accused of the crime, and threatened with an agonising death, young novice Tom Fletcher has no choice but to investigate.
Sarah Matthias studied at Oxford University and then worked for the BBC where she produced a documentary called The Nazi Hunter, based on the life and work of Simon Wiesenthal, a holocaust survivor who spent much of his life tracking down war criminals. A Berlin exhibition, Hitler and the Germans, Nation and Crime, further inspired her to research the wartime persecution of the Romani people. Sarah’s previous books include three well-received medieval mystery stories for children: The Riddle of the Poisoned Monk, Tom Fletcher and the Angel of Death and Tom Fletcher and the Three Wise Men. She lives in London with her family. Read about Sarah Matthias here.
