Margaret Frazer

Margaret Frazer is the pen name most closely associated with the Dame Frevisse and Joliffe historical mysteries. The Sempster’s Tale is the fifteenth Dame Frevisse novel and places the Benedictine nun in London during the summer of 1450. Frevisse travels to arrange funeral vestments and recover concealed gold, but her task becomes entangled with Anne Blakhall, merchant Daved Weir, political unrest, and a suspicious death. The book uses the period trade term “sempster” within carefully developed historical detail, and Penguin issued a 2007 reprint in the Sister Frevisse sequence. The Margaret Frazer identity began as a collaboration before Gail Frazer continued the series alone, bringing her research interests and affection for the fifteenth century to later volumes. The Sempster’s Tale shows Margaret Frazer combining a recurring investigator with trade, religion, prejudice, and civic tension, making the historical setting part of the mystery’s cause rather than decorative background.