Company of Liars

Karen Maitland's novel, set in medieval England, features a motley cast--including a one-eyed relics dealer, a musician and his apprentice, and a young girl who reads runes--each of whom has something to hide. While much of the writing suffers from clichés and pretensions, the characters are richly drawn, and Maxwell Caulfield gives each one a uniquely magnificent voice, whatever the gender or accent of the speaker. Even minor characters get the full treatment. While the novel will likely interest only fans of historical fantasy, Caulfield's performance transcends the limits of the genre and gives the story an extra dimension. D.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

August 25, 2008
Desperate to outrun the Black Death ravaging England during the sodden summer of 1348, nine disparate souls band together in this harrowing historical, which infuses a Canterbury Tales
scenario with the spectral chill of an M. Night Shyamalan ghost story. Maitland (The White Room
) gives each of the travelers a potentially devastating secret. How did narrator Camelot, a glib-tongued peddler of false relics and hope, really come by that hideously scarred face? What is magician Zophiel hiding inside his wagon? And just who is Narigorm, the spooky albino girl whose readings of the runes are always eerily on target? As the nine strangers slog cross-country through the pestilential landscape, their number shrinking one by one, they come to realize that what they don't know about each other might just kill them. Despite Maitland's yarn-spinning prowess, her narrative occasionally stalls because of unrelenting grimness and an increasingly predictable plot—that is, until its gasp-out-loud finale.