Hell's Kitchen

The Joslin de Lay Mysteries #3

by Dennis Hamley

Joslin de Lay has reached Oxford. It's a place riven by hatred and violence. Joslin senses danger but has no choice but to enter. He is taken into Doncaster College where he sings for the Masters and his supper. But Death has entered with him and throughout the dark cloisters and musty libraries, bodies are being discovered. Truly a little knowledge is a dangerous thing... 'It was like no plant Joslin - or even Gilbert with so many years behind him - had ever seen. They stood in the pouring rain looking down but fearing to touch.'What stood up from the earth was no plant. Joslin felt sick. Gilbert turned away. They saw a human hand, part of a body which must have been there for several weeks, buried next to the cursed mandrake.'

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fantasy

Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Dennis Hamley was born in Kent in 1935 and lived in southern England throughout the war. After attending Cambridge University and completing a PHD at Leicester, Dennis went on to teach English and work in Education as a tutor and advisor.

He began writing in the 1970s and quickly showed his versatility. From the supernatural, to football to wartime novels, Dennis’s beautifully simple prose transports the reader effortlessly to the world of his novels. Many of Dennis’s tales center on uncovering the truth and revealing hidden stories. He uses period details and sensitive characterization to bring history and its people to life. He is passionate about providing page-turning reads for a new generation of discriminating readers.

Reviews

[Sofia Fresia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terza e stupenda avventura di Joslin De Lay!! Questi libriccini hanno la capacità di estraniarti completamente dalla realtà e catapultarti in un mondo dove non ti stanchi mai di essere… sicuramente da leggere se si hanno 10-12 anni!!!

[Griselda Heppel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn’t resist this – a mediaeval mystery set in Oxford, where much of the environment remains the same, 600 or so years later. The cold-blooded murder of an elderly scholar in Doncaster College library - on the brink of an extraordinary discovery - grips the reader from the start; soon it transpires that all is not well in the college. As the bodies pile up, the long-suffering minstrel, Joslin de Lay, en route to Wales, finds himself bound to hunt the murderer down, and the many twists and turns of the plot kept me guessing right till the end. A superb story in which the mediaeval world is effortlessly recreated; I was particularly intrigued by the way Oxford was laid out in the Middle Ages, with thoroughfares bearing such splendid names as Fish Street and Horsemonger Street, and the dubiously named Swindlestock Tavern serving as the engine room of the famous deadly St Scholastica Day riots of February, 1355.
A standalone story, Hell’s Kitchen is actually the third of six Joslin de Lay mysteries. Right, I’d better start at the beginning!