I was captivated by this book before I completed the 3rd page. The characters are absolutely alive! This story is consistent, and easy to follow. I appreciate the writing style, Marilyn Durham gives you just enough detail to allow for a visual impression to form, without offering more information than is needed. I found this book to be enjoyable, light reading. ....... ...... .... I had a feeling I would connect with the author after reading the dedication: For my grandmother, who always liked a good clean story but mostly for my mother, who doesn't .... ..... ..... P.S. I am thrilled to have picked up a hard bound copy at a library book sale! (I didn't know what a reasure I had purchased)

I liked the characters, Jake, Carrie and Paco, even Clem & Delia, so much that when I finished the book I immediately started in from the beginning again. They were people I knew and didn't want to leave yet

Flambard's Confession is an absolutely superb book. It is the story of Ranulf Flambard, an important government official under William II (Rufus). Flambard has been identified by Thomas Costain as one of the greatest villains of English history, an assessment which, while not necessarily accurate, is not far from the truth. Flambard's Confession takes the form of a first-person account of Flambard's life, and is abslutely masterful at handling the contradictions and challenges posed by writing the autobiography of someone who is at least villainous, if not a thorough-going villain.

I stumbled on this book, and loved it. I read an enormous amount of historical fiction about the Middle Ages, and did not know whether my feelings about the book were, at least in part, attributable to the fact that few novels have been written about William II and his period. To test this, I passed the book on to several other people, none of whom is a medievalist, and all of whom thought it was one of the greatest historical fiction novels ever written.

I have no idea why this book did not receive more attention when it was written. SOMEONE NEEDS TO REPUBLISH IT. It is a marvelous book, and would sell well with the audiences who read Sharon Kay Penman, Dorothy Dunnett, and all similar authors.

Flambard's Confession is a historical novel of the autobiographical sort, a description of post-conquest England seen through the narrative persona of Ranulph Flambard, a historical figure about whom very little is known except that he (1) collected taxes, and (2) annoyed St. Anselm of Canterbury. The moral of this book: Never annoy a saint.

Despite the considerable heft, this book is thoroughly engrossing, best I've read of the sort since Robert Graves. Part is due to the historical period -- a Chinese observer would call them "interesting times," chronicling the reign of William II. Part is the wealth of characters -- William himself, a flawed and headlong knight of the old school, who loves Cormac, an Irish relapsed monk and sodomite, who maintains an uneasy truce with Ranulph, who worshipped Cormac as a boy in the cloister and starts his secular career as a spy for William's Uncle Odo, a brawling and treacherous Bishop, who wants to place William's besotted brother Robert on the throne, but fails only to see the third brother, slimy Henry Beauclerk (Henry I) succeed instead. Ranulph -- "frail to women from his first day out of the cloister" -- must deal with knight's widow Isabel de Trie, the ditzy love of Ranulph's youth and mother of his arrogant bastard son Martin as well as the love of his life, the Saxon girl Elfgiva. The story is enlivened with cameos by Malcolm MacDuncan Canmore, MacBeth's bane, and his virtuous sister; various brutal and unscrupulous knights, treacherous lords, worldly churchmen, cynical commoners, and the infuriating Anselm, a saintly man somewhat too taken with his own saintliness -- prototype for either Mohandas K. Gandhi or Jimmy Carter, depending on your politics. Ranulph lives and dies as a robust, cynical, almost Rabelaisian cleric (the type was common then) and marvellous storyteller. I read it every few years, and find something new every time.

In part a traditional Western with a motley band of not-so-bad outlaws and a spunky heroine, and in part a more modern take on the difficulties of being a woman in a man's world. While the hero, John Grobart, seems tailor-made for a Clint Eastwood or a John Wayne, his situation -- obsessing over his dead wife Cat Dancing while trying to deal with his plucky captive, Catherine Crocker -- is anything but a cliche. The story has some shocking twists and turns that keep you guessing at how the characters will react. The only disappointment is the ending, which lets the author off the hook in forcing both John and Catherine to choose. I enjoyed the story on the surface, but ended up puzzled by the author's intentions and whether the story had any larger meaning.

Catherine Crocker has put up with a lot from her husband Willard, but when he slaps her face in front of his whole mining crew that's the last straw and she rides away from camp planning to leave him forever. Meanwhile, John Wesley "Jay" Grobart was once a respected Army officer, a captain of Mounted Rifles, but when he revenged himself upon the three fellow white men who raped and murdered his Indian wife, Cat Dancing, he was sent to prison for ten years. Now he's gotten a rather motley gang together to rob a train. Their paths cross when Catherine rides into the midst of the train robbery and Grobart is forced to take her with him as they are pursued across the 1880's Wyoming Territory by Harvey Lapchance--agent for Wells, Fargo and an ex-Pinkerton who just happens to be the man who arrested Grobart those years ago--and his posse which, much to Lapchance's chagrin, includes the loutish, violent, and increasingly drunken Harvey Crocker.

As they flee, Grobart has to try to protect Catherine from his unruly cohorts and from marauding Indians. In turn, she gradually unravels his secrets, learning that there was more to Cat Dancing's death than folks realize and that Grobart is purposely headed into Indian territory to retrieve his children, who are being raised by their Shoshone uncle, Iron Knife. Initially forced together by mere circumstance, there is an obvious attraction between Catherine and Grobart, but he is still very much haunted by the past. Catherine though, quickly adapts to her newfound freedom and turns out to be more than a match for Grobart and for the ghost of Cat Dancing.

Many of the greatest Westerns have featured strong female characters (see Orrin's reviews of Shane, Riders of the Purple Sage, and The Virginian), so this one is hardly groundbreaking, but Durham does bring a distinctly feminist sensibility to the story and, though there's plenty of action, keeps her focus on the relationship between Grobart and Catherine. Grobart, tortured by memories of his past, is a particularly compelling character, but it is Catherine's development into an independent and capable woman which holds the story together. They make for an unusual and interesting couple in this really fine Western.

GRADE : B+