I’m making good progress on the Owen Archer series! I’m really enjoying it, and I don’t really feel the urge to binge it so I can actually pace it out. I mean, I enjoy most of the books I read but it’s a treat to know you have a book you’re certain to enjoy coming up!

The King’s Bishop brings the feud between Thoresby, Owen’s employer, and Alice Perrers, the King’s mistress to the forefront. In my review of The Lady Chapel, I mentioned wanting to see more of Perrers, and I have! The King’s Bishop starts with the suspicious death of a page. Many people suspect Ned, who threatened the page for getting too close to his beloved, Mary (the maid of Alice Perrers). When a member of the clergy is found dead, things look even worse for Ned.

So it now falls to Owen to protect Ned from the men who think he’s a killer while finding out who the real killer is. At the same time, Thoresby is struggling between the urge to play politic and the desire to retire from the world altogether. Of course, he’s still in a power struggle with Alice Perrers, who’s deeply connected to this case through the death of her maid.

As I expected, I really enjoyed this story! In particular, I love the development of Thoresby and Perrers’ characters. Thoresby has already been changing in the books, as he ages and moves towards a life of contemplation, but this is the book where he gets more space to act. He’s not just Owen’s boss, he has stakes in this game and he has to decide what he wants to do. And while Perrers is Thoresby’s rival, I can’t help but admire her – she’s a woman who’s doing what she has to do to not only survive but thrive (financially). I like that neither of these characters were pure evil, but rather had many shades of grey that allowed the reader to choose who they wanted to sympathise with.

Compared to the other books, we don’t see as much of medieval York in The King’s Bishop. Instead, we spend quite a lot of time in Windsor, which is also a place that I’ve visited before! I did think that Windsor was not as vividly brought to life as York was, but that could also be because Windsor felt like a court, while York is a city with many types of people. Or it could be that I need to be in a location while reading the book to feel like it’s being brought to life.

Overall, this book was another exciting adventure in medieval England for me! As always, I appreciated how the mysteries are grounded in the history of that era, and I look forward to reading another Owen Archer mystery in the near future!