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Most Loving Mere Folly
A post-WWII love affair is eroded by suspicions of murder, from the Edgar Award–winning author of the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael.
Talented potter Suspiria Freeland and her painter husband, Theo, survived the Blitz and are living among fellow artists in a bombed-out London suburb. But since the war’s terror ended, Theo’s drunken self-loathing has become even harder for his long-suffering wife to bear.
When Dennis Forbes enters their lives, Suspiria is immediately drawn to the handsome young mechanic. Though he obviously shares her passionate attraction, he is fourteen years her junior and she, of course, is married . . . until Theo’s lifeless body is discovered.
Theo’s death from poison leaves his widow free to love and marry her much younger paramour. But their newfound happiness is soon threatened on all sides—by a community’s gossip and mistrust, by a legal system determined to enact justice at any price, and by the lovers themselves, as suspicion continues to mount that one of them is a murderer.
This stand-alone novel of forbidden love, suspicion, and suspense is further evidence why the Financial Times called Edgar, Agatha, and Gold Dagger Award–winning author Ellis Peters “a cult figure of crime fiction.”
Talented potter Suspiria Freeland and her painter husband, Theo, survived the Blitz and are living among fellow artists in a bombed-out London suburb. But since the war’s terror ended, Theo’s drunken self-loathing has become even harder for his long-suffering wife to bear.
When Dennis Forbes enters their lives, Suspiria is immediately drawn to the handsome young mechanic. Though he obviously shares her passionate attraction, he is fourteen years her junior and she, of course, is married . . . until Theo’s lifeless body is discovered.
Theo’s death from poison leaves his widow free to love and marry her much younger paramour. But their newfound happiness is soon threatened on all sides—by a community’s gossip and mistrust, by a legal system determined to enact justice at any price, and by the lovers themselves, as suspicion continues to mount that one of them is a murderer.
This stand-alone novel of forbidden love, suspicion, and suspense is further evidence why the Financial Times called Edgar, Agatha, and Gold Dagger Award–winning author Ellis Peters “a cult figure of crime fiction.”
279 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1953
45 people are currently reading
81 people want to read
About the author
Edith Pargeter
48 books194 followersaka Peter Benedict, Jolyon Carr, Ellis Peters (later editions of her work are sometimes published under this pseudonym), and John Redfern
West Midlands Literary Heritage website biography
Novelist. Born September 1913 at Horsehay, Shropshire. Her father was a clerk at a local ironworks. Edith attended Dawley Church of England School and the Coalbrookdale High School for Girls. Through her mother, she grew to love the history and countryside of Shropshire, her home for all of her life.
Before World War II she worked as a chemist's assistant at Dawley. During this time she started writing seriously for publication while gathering useful information on medicines that she would draw upon later when tackling crime stories. Her first published novel was Hortensius, friend of Nero (1936), a rather dry tale of martyrdom that was not a great success but she persevered and The city lies foursquare (1939) was much more warmly received.
During the war she worked in an administrative role with the Women's Royal Navy Service in Liverpool, a relatively brief period away from Shropshire, and for her devotion to duty she received the British Empire Medal. Many more novels appeared at this time, including Ordinary people (1941) and She goes to war (1942), the latter based on her own wartime experiences. The eighth champion of Christendom appeared in 1945 and from now on she was able to devote all her time to writing. She was particularly proud of her Heaven tree trilogy, which appeared between 1961 and 1963, which had as a backdrop the English Welsh borderlands in the twelfth century.
It was not until 1951 that she tackled a mystery story with Fallen into the pit, the first appearance of Sergeant George Felse as the investigating police officer. Her other great character, and the one for which the author will continue to be known the world over, Brother Cadfael, was to follow many years later. The first appearance of this monk at Shrewsbury Abbey was in A morbid taste for bones (1977) and he mixed his herbs and unravelled mysteries in this atmospheric setting for a further nineteen novels. This kept the author very busy for the remaining 18 years of her life, to the virtual exclusion of all other work.
The name "Ellis Peters" was adopted by Edith Pargeter to clearly mark a division between her mystery stories and her other work. Her brother was Ellis and Petra was a friend from Czechoslovakia. A frequent visitor to the country, Edith Pargeter had begun her association and deep interest in their culture after meeting Czechoslovakian soldiers during the war. This was to lead to her learning the language translating several books into English.
She won awards for her writing from both the British Crime Writers Association and the Mystery Writers of America. She was also awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), an honorary Masters Degree from Birmingham University and the Gold Medal of the Czechoslovak Society for Foreign Relations. There is a memorial to her in Shrewsbury Abbey.
After her death in October 1995, The Times published a full obituary that declared that here was "a deeply sensitive and perceptive woman....an intensely private and modest person " whose writing was "direct, even a little stilted, matching a self-contained personality".
West Midlands Literary Heritage website biography
Novelist. Born September 1913 at Horsehay, Shropshire. Her father was a clerk at a local ironworks. Edith attended Dawley Church of England School and the Coalbrookdale High School for Girls. Through her mother, she grew to love the history and countryside of Shropshire, her home for all of her life.
Before World War II she worked as a chemist's assistant at Dawley. During this time she started writing seriously for publication while gathering useful information on medicines that she would draw upon later when tackling crime stories. Her first published novel was Hortensius, friend of Nero (1936), a rather dry tale of martyrdom that was not a great success but she persevered and The city lies foursquare (1939) was much more warmly received.
During the war she worked in an administrative role with the Women's Royal Navy Service in Liverpool, a relatively brief period away from Shropshire, and for her devotion to duty she received the British Empire Medal. Many more novels appeared at this time, including Ordinary people (1941) and She goes to war (1942), the latter based on her own wartime experiences. The eighth champion of Christendom appeared in 1945 and from now on she was able to devote all her time to writing. She was particularly proud of her Heaven tree trilogy, which appeared between 1961 and 1963, which had as a backdrop the English Welsh borderlands in the twelfth century.
It was not until 1951 that she tackled a mystery story with Fallen into the pit, the first appearance of Sergeant George Felse as the investigating police officer. Her other great character, and the one for which the author will continue to be known the world over, Brother Cadfael, was to follow many years later. The first appearance of this monk at Shrewsbury Abbey was in A morbid taste for bones (1977) and he mixed his herbs and unravelled mysteries in this atmospheric setting for a further nineteen novels. This kept the author very busy for the remaining 18 years of her life, to the virtual exclusion of all other work.
The name "Ellis Peters" was adopted by Edith Pargeter to clearly mark a division between her mystery stories and her other work. Her brother was Ellis and Petra was a friend from Czechoslovakia. A frequent visitor to the country, Edith Pargeter had begun her association and deep interest in their culture after meeting Czechoslovakian soldiers during the war. This was to lead to her learning the language translating several books into English.
She won awards for her writing from both the British Crime Writers Association and the Mystery Writers of America. She was also awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), an honorary Masters Degree from Birmingham University and the Gold Medal of the Czechoslovak Society for Foreign Relations. There is a memorial to her in Shrewsbury Abbey.
After her death in October 1995, The Times published a full obituary that declared that here was "a deeply sensitive and perceptive woman....an intensely private and modest person " whose writing was "direct, even a little stilted, matching a self-contained personality".
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 16, 2016
For a romance novel this was very good. For a start the characters were complex and relatable. I have also been reading How to Write a Brilliant Romance: The easy, step-by-step method of crafting a powerful romance which has shocked me (so far) with its stereotypes and narrownessof character stereotypes. If every "hero" of a "brilliant" romance novel has to be esentially the same (cookie cutter art) then no wonder the genre always seems flat, lifeless and unsatisfying to read (and that's the "brilliant" examples). But Pargeter in this book does somethings that break the rules.
Her heroine is older than the hero, she is smarter, more powerful, more worldly and in many ways the leader. She is also flawed but oh so achingly attractive. I was easily able to put myself in the heroes shoes and be madly in love with her (and it is rare for me to really relate to straight OR queer characters in a romance novel, but especially straight ones). The hero is young, beautiful (which surprised and sort of disappointed me because by that time I was identifying with him very strongly) has a sort of innocence tempered by a meanness to him. There are complexities of social class that are at times brilliantly and sensitively written at other times Pargeter falls into the casual judgment and meanness of the "progressive" middle-class person but she manages not to stay there completely (there is still too much of it though in the lens we see Dennis' family through).
Add to that the death of Theo, Suspiria's husband. Then there is the question of which of them killed him and the tragedy of their inevitable decline into chaos and hell partly because of the unresolved reality of Theo's death and partly because society. I did love the way society was shown to constitute and limit even free thinkers and rebels. So true, so tragic, so much romantic angst.
Which I had a love-hate relationship with. I would have loved this much depth of emotion and psychological introvision when I was younger and to be fair I think romance (as a genre, as a style, as a way of seeing the world) demands it. But the fare here was so rich as to at times be almost undigestible. The characters (and the POV shifted expertly but sometimes unsettlingly) always had big emotions, deep feelings, complex shadows upon shadows in their tortured souls and heavily breathing identities. So much darkness and angst and deep, deep pain. There was redemption in something that happened (my lips are sealed) and I found the book almost cleansing, but cleansing like one of those almond meal and coconut fat "raw" cakes maybe with beetroot or kale added for fibre. It was hard as hell to battle through the whole thing (albeit it was less than 300 pages and didn;t look like much...meither do those healthy cakes ever look big).
So a femme fatale to fall for, a too good to be true but enchantingly gauche hero, a tortured anti-hero and a well-meaning but too awful working class family. Deep, deep layers of feeling and perception; tragedy, purgatory and finally some sort of resolution. All with Pargeter's above average writing, crafted beautifully. Why don't people write so carefully or so well anymore?
If you must read romance, try this...
Her heroine is older than the hero, she is smarter, more powerful, more worldly and in many ways the leader. She is also flawed but oh so achingly attractive. I was easily able to put myself in the heroes shoes and be madly in love with her (and it is rare for me to really relate to straight OR queer characters in a romance novel, but especially straight ones). The hero is young, beautiful (which surprised and sort of disappointed me because by that time I was identifying with him very strongly) has a sort of innocence tempered by a meanness to him. There are complexities of social class that are at times brilliantly and sensitively written at other times Pargeter falls into the casual judgment and meanness of the "progressive" middle-class person but she manages not to stay there completely (there is still too much of it though in the lens we see Dennis' family through).
Add to that the death of Theo, Suspiria's husband. Then there is the question of which of them killed him and the tragedy of their inevitable decline into chaos and hell partly because of the unresolved reality of Theo's death and partly because society. I did love the way society was shown to constitute and limit even free thinkers and rebels. So true, so tragic, so much romantic angst.
Which I had a love-hate relationship with. I would have loved this much depth of emotion and psychological introvision when I was younger and to be fair I think romance (as a genre, as a style, as a way of seeing the world) demands it. But the fare here was so rich as to at times be almost undigestible. The characters (and the POV shifted expertly but sometimes unsettlingly) always had big emotions, deep feelings, complex shadows upon shadows in their tortured souls and heavily breathing identities. So much darkness and angst and deep, deep pain. There was redemption in something that happened (my lips are sealed) and I found the book almost cleansing, but cleansing like one of those almond meal and coconut fat "raw" cakes maybe with beetroot or kale added for fibre. It was hard as hell to battle through the whole thing (albeit it was less than 300 pages and didn;t look like much...meither do those healthy cakes ever look big).
So a femme fatale to fall for, a too good to be true but enchantingly gauche hero, a tortured anti-hero and a well-meaning but too awful working class family. Deep, deep layers of feeling and perception; tragedy, purgatory and finally some sort of resolution. All with Pargeter's above average writing, crafted beautifully. Why don't people write so carefully or so well anymore?
If you must read romance, try this...
February 4, 2015
The worst Ellis Peters (Edit Pargeter) book I've read. And I still gave it 3 stars because she was a genius.
"Most Loving Mere Folly" reminds me of "Anna Karenina." It's basically a tragedy caused by self-loving idolatry.
The murder mystery is secondary to the psychological elements which just really don't work for me.
And yet, I still read the whole thing because E.P. was a genius.
"Most Loving Mere Folly" reminds me of "Anna Karenina." It's basically a tragedy caused by self-loving idolatry.
The murder mystery is secondary to the psychological elements which just really don't work for me.
And yet, I still read the whole thing because E.P. was a genius.
August 28, 2023
This was a bit of a doozy...I had forgotten that the Edith Pargeter books are by and large a leetle more Dramatic than the Ellis Peters books, both written by the same person. Ellis Peters' Cadfael stories rest closer to the ''cozy'' side of the mystery category, although they don't land wholly there (this is why I like them, death and violent crime should not be turned into cozy things), but this rests closer to the psychological mystery novel, less detective work and more the feelings and experiences of the suspects in the case.
I had to look up the title. It is a quote from a poem by Shakespeare, part of a line that means ''most friendships are fake and most romantic relationships foolishness." And this helps me understand the book a bit, because the central relationship DOES seem like folly to me, honestly, particularly in its inception, and if the book is trying to demonstrate that, it succeeds for me. And now that I have thought it all through, in the context of this quote, I think it works.
Phew. Sometimes it's all in the title.
I had to look up the title. It is a quote from a poem by Shakespeare, part of a line that means ''most friendships are fake and most romantic relationships foolishness." And this helps me understand the book a bit, because the central relationship DOES seem like folly to me, honestly, particularly in its inception, and if the book is trying to demonstrate that, it succeeds for me. And now that I have thought it all through, in the context of this quote, I think it works.
Phew. Sometimes it's all in the title.
August 29, 2025
This book is terrible - well, written of course as anything from Ellis Peters is - but terrible content. A young middle class man meets an older (30s) artist couple. Eventually, he and the wife realize that they are "really" in love and she only got along sweetly with her husband but never truly connected with him. When the husband discovers they are having an affair, the wife can't understand why he is upset. Then he dies - and there are only 3 options: suicide, murder by wife, or murder by lover. The spiraling press and destruction weaves its way through the rest of the book until its surprising conclusion. The conclusion is sweet - but Christians have no business reading this sort of content. And a sweet ending doesn't justify murder, adultery, lying, and everything that is opposite to Christian love.
December 7, 2017
Probably 3.5 stars. I would rate it higher, but it was a somewhat slow read. However, the author used an interesting concept. The book begins with the usual lovers' triangle, followed by the suspicious death of one of them, focusing suspicion on the two remaining. One of them is arrested and tried.
This book is quite thought-provoking. Interesting, believable characters, in a story with more depth than usual. Recommended.
This book is quite thought-provoking. Interesting, believable characters, in a story with more depth than usual. Recommended.
July 21, 2025
This book is like no other in the Ellis Peters canon. Do you read her for the humane characters with charming idiosyncrasies, like Cadfael or Felse? Well, most of this book reads like Macbeth or Madame Bovary. Very intensely psychological and tragic. And not at all a traditional mystery; I think if you reread the early chapters she makes it clear how the death came about, but no one sits down for the analysis in this one.
February 25, 2019
Insightful, intense, deep characterization of artist, free spirit, independent thinker, Everyman. Love examined in all its glory and in its fear of rejection. A complex read but enjoyable
Did Not Finish
July 25, 2020DNF - not for me
September 4, 2022
Read this many years ago
January 25, 2026
Intense. And I’m not sure if I really understood it. Definitely not the same as Cadfael
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews