Susanna Gregory

She writes detective fiction, and is noted for her series of mediaeval mysteries featuring Matthew Bartholomew, a teacher of medicine and investigator of murders in 14th-century Cambridge.

Her books may have some aspects in common with the Ellis Peters Cadfael series, the mediaeval adventures of two men, a highly intelligent physician and a Benedictine monk who is senior proctor of Cambridge University.

Matthew Bartholomew's activities as a healer, including examination of corpses, embroil him in a series of mysterious crimes, both secular and monastic, and he reluctantly assumes the role of an amateur sleuth.

But there any resemblance to the comparatively warm-hearted Cadfael series ends: the tone and subject matter of the Gregory novels is darker and does not shrink from portraying the realities of life in the Middle Ages.

Gregory wrote this series of novels about 12th-century knight Geoffrey Mappestone with her husband, Beau Riffenburgh, under the combined pseudonym Simon Beaufort.