Medieval mysteries are intriguing to me in that forensics are out, making motive, opportunity, and insight into the dark pathways of the human mind absolutely critical. Oops, checked my dates and this is not actually medieval, but Renaissance. It is set in the early seventeenth century in Germany. Same rules apply.
For once, the pre-modern detective (that should cover all those medieval mystery series as well as this one) is NOT a monk or a nun. The detective is the hangman. His daughter is important to the story, but she is definitely not the central character. The hangman's position in society as described in the story is an odd and awkward one. Rather like the untouchables in India, the hangman was essential to their social structure (his job included torture and such as well as hanging and beheading) but the nature of the work put him outside normal society. Hangmen did not marry outside their clan; they were considered bad luck - people did not speak to them unless necessary or even make eye contact. So - the hangman's daughter would marry the son of the hangman in another village, and the hangman's son would take up the headsman's sword in his own time. Our hangman's daughter has taken up with the son of a self-styled doctor providing much material for the local gossips. Curiously, this hangman is a healer in his own right - and a much more successful one than the doctor. His "patients" tend to come to him very quietly after dark. Also virtually outcaste in the society are midwives. Go figure.
The story itself is very dark and rather slow moving. Although unless one is a fluent reader in both languages, it is impossible to know how much to blame on the translator. The only time I actually tried to read a novel in German was after we read an excerpt of Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks in a German lit class in college. I was fascinated by the small piece and went after the novel. I probably made it about a third of the way through, then a bit more with English and German side by side - then just finished it in English. I suspect that German renders in English better than a good many other languages.
As described in this book, the renaissance was not the sole property of the upper classes. The only character who typifies the "renaissance man" would be the hangman himself - who reads and owns books and believes that what lies beneath the skin may have something to do with illness. And - is willing at personal risk to search for a killer rather than allow an innocent woman be labeled a witch - even if he must torture her to attempt to force a false confession.
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