Burning with passion and pain

LOVE WITHOUT END by Melvyn Bragg (Sceptre £18.99, 320 pp)

THE fate of the 12th-century lovers Abelard and Heloise is the tragic subject of this time-shift novel.

In 1117, Paris is an intellectual hub, and the brilliant radical philosopher Peter Abelard is at its centre.

He falls for his learned and beautiful student, Heloise, the niece (but probably the daughter) of Canon Fulbert, who is enraged when he discovers their relationship and takes brutal revenge.

In the present day, novelist Arthur is in Paris researching a novel about them.

Together with his feminist daughter, he analyses the affair and its consequences — which includes castration and Heloise’s incarceration in a nunnery.

The novel asks: Can we understand the religious and cultural mindset that led to the lovers’ downfall?

In this fascinating, haunting evocation of two people aflame with passion and love of learning, Melvyn Bragg dramatises the struggle to find consolation in faith.

MRS MOHR GOES MISSING by Maryla Szymiczkowa (Oneworld £12.99, 320 pp)

BILLED as an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, this is the first in a projected series. Happily married, but bored, the socially ambitious Zofia Turbotynska visits a retirement home in Krakow run by nuns to drum up support for a charity raffle.

Her attention is diverted by the unexplained deaths of two of the residents. To her secret enjoyment, she and her quick-witted servant, Franciszka, are soon hot on the trail of an explanation.

The unravelling of the mystery is ingenious and takes us through a social setting quivering with snobberies and dos and don’ts.

It’s fun and sparky and the glimpse of turn-of-thecentury Polish manners and mores is beguiling.

THE COURIER by Kjell Ola Dahl (Orenda £8.99, 276 pp)

WORKING as a courier for the resistance in the war, Jewish Ester is betrayed and flees Oslo for Stockholm, leaving behind her family and her friend Ase, who is in a failing relationship with resistance hero Gerhard Falkum.

Then Ase is found dead. Nazis? Collaborators? Natural causes? Or revenge?

Cleverly braiding together past and present, the who and why of murder and betrayal are unpicked.

The detail is impressive and the tone unflashy. After a little resistance to the time switching, the novel grew on me.