I liked this entire series of books. I like the characters. They are easy reads but I found got to be a bit predictable by this book. ( )

Most predictable book of the series. I guessed whodunnit early on. ( )

3.5 stars

This is book 4 of the series. Jakob is the hangman in a small town in Bavaria; Magdalena is his adult daughter. She married “above her station” to the local doctor, Simon, and they have two young sons. Magdalena and Simon have gone to the next town over on a pilgrimage. They are at a monastery when two murdered monks are discovered and a third has disappeared along with an automaton one of the monks had been working on. Jakob comes to help find out what’s going on.

I quite enjoyed this installment of the series. I hate when I’m not sure how to rate something, though. 3.5 is good, and that’s how I felt through most of the book. I never lost interest in the almost 500-page book, but at the same time, it wasn’t really a “page-turner”, either. Boy, the number of times everyone seemed to insult others, though! I still enjoyed it enough, though, to continue with the series. ( )

Read 200 of the 500 pages and gave up. The characters were not at all appealing to me and, at least in translation, speech was sometimes annoyingly modern. ( )

Good but gosh Magdalena and Simon's marriage is annoying. Magdalena's a useless nag. And why did those KIDS have to pop up so suddenly in the stories? UGH ( )