A whodunnit filled with mystery and terrible error

IN 1662, during Lent, reinstated by King Charles II, Doctor Thomas Browne is called from his happy home in Norwich to be an inquisitor for a trial that will change his life.

The summons comes from an “old acquaintant, the Lord Chief Baron of His Majesty’s Court of the Exchequer, Sir Matthew Hale”.

Dr Browne is required to attend the Lent Assizes at Bury St Edmunds, where two elderly women are to be tried for witchcraft.

He makes the two-day journey in foul weather and finds the small fishing village gloomy and wet. He is to act as an inquisitor for Sir Matthew, gathering information for him on the allegations made against two widows: Rose Cullender and Amy Denny, who are accused variously of the death of one child, the affliction of strange maladies of another six, and of causing damage to farmers’ fields.

Mark Winkler is, to my mind, one of the finest novelists writing today. He is the author of An Exceptionally Simple Theory (of Absolutely Everything), Wasted, The Safest Place You Know, Theo & Flora, and Due South of Copenhagen.

Dr Browne is based on a person who actually lived in the 1600s and was a medical doctor who trained at some of the great universities in Europe, as well as being a man deeply interested in the study of the natural world.

His first meeting with Sir Matthew is one of interrogation of his religious beliefs and how he balances them with his scientific views on the mutability of knowledge and the natural world.

He is then sent off with a clerk, Charles Clark, to the village of Leystoff to interview the deponents in the case. He finds them unconvincing in their vivid stories, which are uncorroborated by any witnesses.

In Bury St Edmunds, Dr Browne attempts to interview the accused, who are being held shackled in the most foul conditions, and starved. He is a kind man, although by the end of the novel he will have judged himself not a good man. And so he endeavours to get the women at least one meal a day.

While there are many scientific facts and history in this novel, Winkler conveys them as a readable literary work.

But, beneath the conceits of Sir Matthew and the curiosity of Clark wanting to learn more, there lie other issues.

The mistreatment of women and the hideous trials of witches are deeply examined, just as one of the women is examined in the cruellest manner to find out if she has an extra “teat”, which was taken to be a sign of being possessed by Satan.

But, there is also an underlying answer to the mystery of why all of the accusers claim not to know each other, which mystifies Dr Browne, given that Leystoff is but a small village. He finds no answer for this.

He does his work with Clark by his side, but makes a terrible error of judgement in ignoring a piece of information that will haunt him for the rest of his life; it has to do with greed as a motive for the accusation and corruption flowing from another case that Sir Matthew has heard.

Miss this book at your peril.