sister fidelma works

A CHECKLIST OF THE SISTER FIDELMA WORKS OF PETER TREMAYNE

  • Sister Fidelma novels series
    Listed in chronological order of UK publication – novels and collections of short stories, as Peter Tremayne:
      1. Absolution By Murder (1994)
      2. Shroud for the Archbishop (1995)
      3. Suffer Little Children (1995)
      4. The Subtle Serpent (1996)
      5. The Spider’s Web (1997)
      6. Valley of the Shadow (1998)
      7. The Monk Who Vanished (1999)
      8. Act of Mercy (1999)
      9. Our Lady of Darkness (2000)
      10. Hemlock At Vespers (2000)
      11. Smoke in the Wind (2001)
      12. The Haunted Abbot (2002)
      13. Badger’s Moon (2003)
      14. Whispers of the Dead (2004)
      15. The Leper’s Bell (2004)
      16. Master of Souls (2005)
      17. A Prayer for the Damned (2006)
      18. Dancing With Demons (2007)
      19. The Council of the Cursed (2008)
      20. The Dove of Death (2009)
      21. The Chalice of Blood (2010)
      22. Behold a Pale Horse (2011)
      23. The Seventh Trumpet (2012)
      24. Atonement of Blood (2013)
      25. The Devil’s Seal (2014)
      26. The Second Death (2015)
      27. Penance of the Damned (2016)
      28. Night of the Lightbringer (2017)
      29. Die Wahrheit ist der Lüge Tod (world first of uncollected novellas and short stories) (2018)
      30. Bloodmoon (2018)
      31. Blood in Eden (2019)
      32. The Shapeshifter’s Lair (2020)
      33. The House of Death (2021)
      34. Death of a Heretic (2022)
      35. Revenge of the Stormbringer (2023)
      36. Prophet of Blood (2024)

Covers for all of the Sister Fidelma series may be seen on THE BOOKS link.

  • Sister Fidelma short stories
    • “Hemlock At Vespers,” Midwinter Mysteries 3, ed. Hilary Hale, Little Brown, London, October 1993; US appearance: Murder Most Irish, ed. Ed Gorman, Larry Segriff & Martin H. Greenberg, Barnes Noble 1996
    • “The High King’s Sword,” Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits, ed. Mike Ashley, Foreword by Ellis Peters, Robinson Books, London 1993; US: Carroll & Graf edition, New York
    • “Murder in Repose,” Great Irish Detective Stories, ed. Peter Haining, Souvenir Press, London 1993
    • “Murder By Miracle,” Constable New Crime No 2, ed. Maxim Jakubowski, Constable, London 1993; US appearance: The Year’s Best Mystery & Suspense Stories 1994, ed. Edward D. Hoch, Walker & Co Ltd, New York
    • “A Canticle for Wulfstan,” Midwinter Mysteries 4, ed. Hilary Hale, Little Brown, London 1994; US appearance: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May 1995
    • “Abbey Sinister,” Mammoth Book of Historical Detectives, ed. Mike Ashley, Robinson Publishing, London 1995; US edition by Carroll & Graf New York
    • “Tarnished Halo,” Minister Mysteries 5, ed. Hilary Hale, Little Brown, London 1995
    • “The Horse That Died for Shame,” Murder at the Races, ed, Peter Haining, Orion Books, London 1995
    • “The Poison Chalice,” Classical Whodunnits, ed. Mike Ashley, Robinson Books, London 1996; US edition by Carroll & Graf, New York
    • “At the Tent of Holofernes,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, December 1997
    • “A Scream from the Sepulchre,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May 1998
    • “Invitation to a Poisoning,” Past Poisons: An Ellis Peters Memorial of Historical Crime, ed. Maxim Jakubowski 1998
    • “Holy Blood,” Great Irish Stories of Murder and Mystery, ed. Peter Haining, Souvenir Press 1999
    • “Those Who Trespass,” Chronicles of Crime – The Second Ellis Peters Memorial Anthology of Historical Crime, ed. Maxim Jakubowski, Headline, October 1999
    • “Our Lady of Death,” Dark Detectives: Adventures of the Supernatural Sleuths, ed. Steve Jones, Fedogan & Bremer 2000
    • “Like A Dog Returning,” Murder Most Medieval, ed. Martin H. Greenberg and John Heifers, Cumberland House, Nashville, Tennessee, USA 2000
    • “Who Stole The Fish?,” Murder Through The Ages, ed. Maxim Jakubowski, Headline Books, London 2000
    • “Scattered Thorns,” Murder Most Celtic, Martin H. Greenburg, Cumberland House, Nashville, Tennessee, USA 2001
    • “Corpse on a Holy Day,” And The Dying Is Easy, ed. Joseph Pittman and Annette Riffle, Signet, New York, April 2001
    • “Death of an Icon”, in a Mike Ashley collection from Robinson, Fall 2001
    • “The Astrologer Who Predicted His Own Murder,” in Death By Horoscope, ed. Anne Perry, Carroll & Graf, New York, Fall 2001.
    • “Death of an Icon,” The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits (Brand New Collection) ed. Mike Ashley, Robinson, London, August 2001 (this is not to be confused with the collection under the same title published in 1993)
    • “Whispers of the Dead” has been published in Murder Most Catholic, edited by Ralph McInerny, Cumberland House, Nashville, Tennessee, ISBN 1-58182-260-X, $14.95
    • “Gold At Night,” Great Irish Drinking Stories, ed. Peter Haining, Souvenir Press, London, Fall 2002
    • “The Blemish,” The Brehon (Journal of the International Sister Fidelma Society), Little Rock, Arkansas, September issue (No.3) 2002
    • “The Lost Eagle,” in The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits, ed. Mike Ashley, Robinson, London, August 2003. ISBN 1-84119-685-1. Also Carroll & Graf, New York, simultaneous publication, ISBN 0-7867-1241-4
    • “Dark Moon Rising,” The Brehon (Journal of the International Sister Fidelma Society), Vol.II, No 3. September 2003
    • “The Banshee,” in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, New York, February 2004
    • “Cry Wolf!” original story for Whispers of the Dead, St Martins Press (New York) and Headline (London) March 2004
    • “The Fosterer,” original story for Whispers of the Dead, St Martins Press (New York) and Headline (London) March 2004
    • “The Heir Apparent,” original story for Whispers of the Dead, St Martins Press (New York) and Headline (London) March 2004
    • “The Spiteful Shadow” in The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits – Third Collection, edited by Mike Ashley, Robinson, London, June 2005 – as New Historical Whodunnits, Carroll & Graf, New York, June 2005; reprinted in An Ensuing Evil and Others: Fourteen Historical Mystery Stories by Peter Tremayne, St Martin’s Minotaur, New York, January 2006. ISBN 0-312-34228-4
    • “Does God Obey his Own Laws?: A Sister Fidelma Mystery,” in Thou Shalt Not Kill: Biblical Mystery Stories, edited by Anne Perry, Carroll & Graf, New York, December 2005
    • “Sanctuary!,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, New York, May 2006
    • “Finnbarr’s Bell,” The Holly Bough (Cork), Christmas 2008
    • “The Night of the Snow Wolf,” (a novelette) in The Mammoth Book of Historical Mysteries, ed. Mike Ashley, Constable Robinson, London, July 2011
    • “The Comb Bag,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, July 2013
    • “The Lair of the White Fox” (e-novella) May 5 2016 Headline Publishing
    • “Catspaw,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, December 2016
    • “The Copyist,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, April 2017

Other details of his fiction work and career are contained in the Tremayne entries in The Encyclopaedia of Fantasy ed. John Clute and John Grant, St Martins Press, USA, and Little Brown, UK, 1997; The Mammoth Encyclopaedia of Modern Crime Fiction, ed. Mike Ashley, Robinson, UK, and Carroll & Graf, USA, 2002; and Supernatural Literature of the World, An Encyclopaedia, edit. S.T. Joshi and Stefan Dziemianowicz, Greenwood Press, USA, 3 vols, 2005.

Book and Magazine Collector, London, October, 2004 (contains a detailed looked at The Sister Fidelma Mysteries).

Peter started to write the Sister Fidelma mysteries as short stories in 1993 merely to illustrate how the Brehon laws worked and how a woman could be an advocate of the law system in 7th century Ireland. The stories were so well received that Headline offered him an initial three-book contract to write novels featuring Sister Fidelma. These have proved extraordinarily popular and several critics have hailed Sister Fidelma as the natural successor to Brother Cadfael.

This is a compliment that Peter disarmingly rejects, pointing out that Fidelma and Cadfael are poles apart. Fidelma lives in a period 800 years before Cadfael and operates in a cultural and law system that is totally alien to the Cadfael settings. However, he does point out that he owes a surprising debt to Cadfael – the origin of the Peter Tremayne pseudonym.

Writing in Past Poisons: An Ellis Peters Memorial Anthology of Historical Crime (ed. by Maxim Jakubowski, Headline, 1998) Peter informs us that Ellis Peters, the creator of Brother Cadfael in 1977, was the pseudonym of Edith Pargetter, famous for her Welsh historical novels. Asked to review the first Cadfael novel A Morbid Taste for Bones in the “Catholic Herald” (London), in August, 1977, he thought that he could not write the review under his own name in case readers might think Ellis Peters was merely a reversal of Peter Berresford Ellis. He then created Peter Tremayne, using the name of a favourite spot in Cornwall, and a name which he developed into his fiction writing pseudonym.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

Scroll to Top