Rejoice, o ye fans of Peter Tremayne (right) – Dancing With Demons, the latest Sister Fidelma mystery and the sixquillionth in the series, is due out in hardback on September 6. The woman who puts the ‘nun’ into ‘nundefatigable’, Fidelma is investigating the murder of the High King of Ireland this time around, and hoping to prevent civil war breaking out in 7th Century Ireland in the process. So why is Sister Fidelma such a (ahem) habit- forming read? Quoth Peter, via the Bridlington Free Press: “The fascinating law system and culture of 7th Century Ireland, sadly, was little known when I started writing the books – the amazing position that women enjoyed, the fact that they could divorce on equal terms with men, that women could aspire to all the professions and be lawyers, doctors, poets and so on, a situation not really paralleled in other European societies at that time, seems to be one reason why the books attract attention. I was even worried about how I could put this across to readers in the English language but it seems to carry into all cultures.Well, what are you waiting for? Get thee to a nunnery, people …The fact that, as of this time, Fidelma has gone into 15 languages, from Japanese to Russian, Bulgarian to Spanish and so on, has been surprising. It seems that readers find a resonance with Fidelma, whom Books Ireland have described as ‘an Irish heroine for both the seventh and the twenty-first centuries’.”
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