The Beloved Dead by Tony Hays – review

A serial killer is roaming the land in Tony Hays’ latest novel, The Beloved Dead, and King Arthur’s most trusted counselor, the one-armed investigative scribe Malgwyn ap Cuneglas, is tested as he never has been before in his efforts to catch the sadistic murderer of teenage girls. Is the murderer, who also viciously sexually assaults his victims with branches, a Druid who has cursed Arthur and desires to see him fail? Is it the physician, Morgan, sent to King Arthur by Lord David, who is at best a grudging ally of the king’s, and at worst might be one of his greatest enemies? Or is it someone else? Whatever the case might be, Malgwyn takes the murders personally, having a daughter himself, and a wife who was killed by the Saxons, and he wants to stop the killer before he strikes again.

King Arthur has become the Rigotamas, the leader over the consilium, a council of pre-Saxon Britania’s lesser lords or kings. He has learned that to strengthen alliances and to make the country stronger he must often make compromises and perform favors for the other lords. The Beloved Dead’s strong and compelling sub-plot involves one of the most difficult such bargains that King Arthur has yet had to make in the series:  he has to make the decision to place his love for Guinevere second by agreeing to a marriage with Gwyneira, the beautiful fourteen-year-old daughter of the powerful Lord Aircol. It’s important to do so, as having Lord Aircol on his side will help prevent incursions from the Saxons.

Besides having an intriguing plot, in which Malgwyn does his best at gathering up the scant available clues to discover who the serial killer is, The Beloved Dead is also a story of competing philosophical and religious points of view. Are the old gods still important, or is the newer one God of King Arthur and his being a follower of Jesus Christ also the course the people of Briton should now take? Have the older gods lost their power, strength, and authority?

Druids like Wynn still are respected by many people at the time this novel is set (the fifth century), despite some of their more controversial practices, like human sacrifice. King Arthur’s own cousin, Mordred, has taken Wynn under his wing of protection. Mordred and King Arthur have had their differences in the past, and Mordred feels that Christianity should not play a role in the future of England. Even Malgwyn is skeptical of Christianity being the best religion for the Britons to embrace. Mordred and many other lords, even those close to King Arthur, like Lord Bedevere, also believe that King Arthur’s choosing to marry Gwyneira just to seal an alliance isn’t enough of a reason to have spurned Guinevere’s love. It’s an act, a choice, that hurts King Arthur in several ways, including sending Guinevere into the arms of one of his foes, Lord Melwas.

Wynn has another reason to be ticked off at King Arthur–the king has dug up the skull of the legendary king of Briton, Bran, who “ordered that his head be severed after his death and buried on the White Mount.” King Arthur decides to dig up the skull because he doesn’t want the people in the area to rely on it as a sort of talisman to protect them. He wants them to become followers of Christ and of himself. However, Wynn is there and warns King Arthur that what he intends to do will bring him tears and woe, and he places a curse on him. Is Wynn actively trying to bring the curse to reality, by murdering young teen girls and thereby showing that Christianity is less powerful than his beliefs? Or is his being at the places at the times when the teens are murdered merely a coincidence?

I like reading great mysteries, and fantastic fantasy novels, and that’s why I was first attracted to this novel. I haven’t read the first two novels of the series, The Killing Way and The Divine Sacrifice, but I found that reading them was not a prerequisite to thoroughly enjoying reading The Beloved Dead. It seemed to me that just the right amount of background was provided to fill in someone new to the series, like myself, without rehashing what’s come before too much, which might make it boring to people familiar with the series. It’s sometimes difficult to get the balance right, but I think Tony Hays succeeds admirably at doing so.

The author’s research of the history behind his novel is also very apparent, whether or not one believes that there ever was an actual King Arthur. You feel yourself transported back to to fifth century England, and the landscapes and sights that one would be likely to see back then are very realistically described by Tony Hays, as are the various customs, foods the people eat, the politics, etc. Fantasies and science fiction novels are the two genres I most love to read, followed closely by mysteries, but I like them to be well-grounded in reality, because that makes some of the more fantastical parts of them more easy to accept as also being plausible.  The Beloved Dead is.

We too often think that our era is the be-all and end-all when it comes to many things, both good and bad, even when it comes to serial killers. But, the truth is that serial killers have been around for probably as long as mankind has, though they likely got away with their crimes more successfully than they do today, because it was difficult to link and note the similarities between certain murder victims killed in the same ways. And, when similarities were noted, as Malgwyn does in The Beloved Dead, there was a lack of adequate means like fingerprints and forensic science analysis to prove that a suspect was the guilty party. You’d either have to get him to confess, or catch him in the act, to prove that he was the culprit. And, all too often, others would tend to think that the concerns of the day, like King Arthur’s marriage and the solidification of alliances, were more important than figuring out who killed whom.

Guinevere’s portrayal in the novel is another aspect I liked. She is, of course, chagrined and angry at taking second place to Gwyneira. She doesn’t want to stay on in the role of the king’s consort. Guinevere is a heroic figure in the novel, and like King Arthur, has to make difficult and courageous choices of her own. Though Gwyneira is described as being very beautiful, and the alliance as being a crucial one, I didn’t especially like the decision King Arthur made to marry her over Guinevere. It does make for an interesting sub-plot, though.

The Beloved Dead is an entertaining, page-turning historical fantasy and murder mystery of the first order. If you’re a fan of any of these genres, I’d highly recommend this book to you. It easily can be read and enjoyed as a stand-alone, though if the preceding novels, The Killing Way and The Divine Sacrifice, are even close to being as good as The Beloved Dead, I’d recommend that you hunt those down and read them first. King Arthur lives once again in The Beloved Dead, if only in our imaginations, brought to colorful life by the talented author Tony Hays. Check it out today!