Starting with the Edgar Award-nominated The Prioress' Tale, the Margaret Frazer pen name was used exclusively by Gail Brown.
In the early novels, Frevisse's uncle (by marriage) Thomas Chaucer, son of the poet, provides a contact point with historical events as he brings news of the world to St. Frideswide's; at his funeral (The Bishop’s Tale), Frevisse establishes a relationship with her cousin Alice Chaucer, who is, in her third marriage, united to William de la Pole, count/marquis/duke (as the novels progress) of Suffolk, one of the most ambitious men around the king.
In the fourth, A Play of Lords, Joliffe is recruited as a spy for Bishop Beaufort and becomes involved in the political intrigues leading up to the Wars of the Roses.
[3] When Joliffe again crosses paths with Dame Frevisse in The Traitor's Tale, he is employed as a spy for the Duke of York, after the death of Bishop Beaufort.
The sixth Joliffe mystery, A Play of Piety,[4] is set in an English hospital where the actors' troupe has taken refuge.
In this setting, strong personalities contend: women against the men who are supposedly in charge; a female medica or herbalist versus the male physician; and a toxic narcissist against everyone else.
Playing the atypical role of a servant to the nursing sisters who run the hospital in open defiance of those who would dominate them, Joliffe solves the mystery.
The second in her Dame Frevisse series, The Servant's Tale received a nomination at the 1994 Edgar Awards in the "Best Paperback Original" category.