This is one of those historical mysteries where I like the sound of the time period being covered—James III of Scotland? Edward IV? Sign me up!—but the execution leaves something to be desired. It’s a very talky mystery as characters bring each other up to speed on the historical events, and the first-person narration of Roger the Shrubber Chapman is repetitive. After six chapters, I lost interest in the story, but *did* want to find a good biography of Edward IV or of James III, so there is that. ( )

One reason I like reading series in order, even when each book stands on its own, is that I like to watch the writer improve, as he or she almost invariably does. This is the first of the Chapman series in which I didn't guess the solution of the mystery almost from the beginning. I must admit that I tend to guess the solution less by my logic and puzzle-solving abilities than by my sense of literary convention--you know, "there's only one lesbian; she's probably the murderer," "we're only halfway through the novel, therefore this suspect probably isn't the guilty one," "this suspect was the first but had an alibi, so it'll probably be disproven," that sort of stuff. As the hints about The Green Man begann to accumulate, however, and especially after Roslyn Chapel was mentioned, I began to suspect where the plot was tending, although not the particulars of its climax. The next novel in the series is even better at keeping me guessing, and the one after that, better yet. But whether I guess the solution or not, I find history easier to learn when it's the setting for a novel, and have enjoyed the whole series enough to give it three stars; with The Green Man, the novels start earning a bit more. ( )

Hmmm, This book was harder to get through than some of the other Roger the Chapman mysteries. The topic was, more often than not, usually about food, eating, "shitting" and "pissing." The author spent more time teasing the reader that there was something "mysterious" and dangerous about the Green Man than fleshing out the plot. ( )