Monthly Archives: January 2011

Review: The Strange Files of Fremont Jones by Dianne Day

Posted on by

When her father marries a woman who she dislikes Caroline Jones brings forward her plans to live an unconventional life. Determined not to marry because of the way it diminishes the role of the woman, she moves from Boston to San Francisco, changes her name to a gender-neutral Fremont and sets up a business as a typist. And it is that business, plus a fascination with Sherlock Holmes, that introduces Fremont to the role of amateur deduction as she becomes involved in investigating several mysteries that her clients seem to be caught up in. One customer leaves a series of gothic horror stories which he claims to be true for her to type and then disappears, while another is killed shortly after Fremont types a curious document for him.

I enjoyed the depiction of San Francisco in the early 1900′s as a place for adventurers and dreamers and the overall inclusion of period details was well done too. The picture painted of a town at a time of change and flux included things like the adoption of new technologies such as the telephone and electricity and it was very engaging.

For me the rest of the book was not as successful. The blurb on my copy suggested it would be suitable for fans of Elizabeth Peters whose character, Amelia Peabody, does share some traits with Fremont Jones. However I found the writing here more stiff and lacking the underlying sense of humour that Peters conveys with her similarly strident and forward-thinking protagonist. There was also too much focus on a fairly implausible romance between Fremont and her first client for my tastes. The use of the first person narrative and Day’s penchant for exclamation points at the end of innocuous sentences contributed to the impression the entire tale was being told by a breathless teenager seeing intrigue where none exists. In all then the book was a bit more of a melodramatic suspense than I enjoy reading but there are plenty of readers who would disagree, including those who awarded the novel a Macavity award for best first novel in 1996.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 2.5/5
Author website http://www.avadianneday.com/
Publisher Bantam [this edition 1996, original edition 1995]
ISBN 055356921X
Length 244 pages
Format mass market paperback
Book Series #1 in the Fremont Jones series
Source I bought it

Review: Pelagia & the White Bulldog by Boris Akunin

Posted on by

After an abandoned attempt to read Death in Breslau I borrowed a second book from the local library to kick off this year’s Eastern Europe Challenge.

Pelagia & the White Bulldog is the first novel of a series set in late 19th century Russia and introduces Sister Pelagia: “a fidgety, curious woman, undignified in her movements and not cut out to be a nun.” She is tasked by the Bishop of Zavolzhie to investigate a situation which is vexing his Aunt who claims that someone has tried to poison the last remaining examples of the the white bulldogs with brown ears that her husband had especially bred before his death. That is really all I can tell you about the plot without delving into action that does not take place until the half-way point of the novel. Although I suppose it is not spoiling things too much to add that there is a second (eventually intertwined) storyline relating to the appointment of Vladimir Lvovich Bubenstov as a representative of the Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod to investigate religious improprieties in the town.

I have to admit to struggling with this book and in some ways I shouldn’t have been surprised. One of the reasons I stopped a formal study of literature during my University days was that I couldn’t face reading what I came to think of as ‘another bloody Russian’ that the syllabus seemed to be full of. I don’t know if it is the original writing or the way the language is translated into English but the one thing the Russian fiction of my acquaintance has in common is an unwillingness to use 10 words when 200 (or 2000) are available. I found the flowery, long-winded prose of Tolstoy and Dostoyesvky dread-inducing all those years ago but I thought perhaps a less ‘worthy’, more recent title might be different. Alas I did not find it so. Amidst the interminably lengthy descriptions of nothing much at all there is a story, of sorts, here but not one that kept me particularly engaged (and not one that couldn’t have been told in one-third the word count). I teased out some interesting observations about the politics of the day but as a mystery the book left a lot to be desired in that the culprit for the crimes that were eventually described was obvious almost from the outset and the way in which Pelagia deduced the answer bordered on the inane.

I didn’t find the characters particularly enjoyable either. I thought I would like Pelagia’s quirkiness but she soon turned into a kind of reject from a Carry On movie what with knocking over fruit bowls and spilling tea in men’s crotches and whatnot. Slapstick has never been my humour of choice. The rest of the characters were all pretty formulaic for the intimate melodrama the book turned into, though the way Bubenstov hid is evilness was the most entertaining thing about the book for me.

I know there are readers who don’t share my admiration for brevity and conciseness and more who simply enjoy the kind of writing that Akunin has produced here. I am probably the poorer for not being able to appreciate this particular style but it can’t be helped. For me the hints of wry humour and mildly interesting plot were lost in the flowery, tangent-riddled prose that made me want to poke my own eyes out with one of the knitting needles that Pelagia carried everywhere.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I couldn’t find much in the way of online reviewing of this book but did come across a 2006 review in the UK paper The Independent that describes a similar reaction to mine. However in the interests of fairness you might want to check Amazon for some more positive reviews.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 2/5 (yes it probably is a little low, but it’s my opinion after all, as all the reviews here are, I’m not making any claims to objectivity)
Author website http://www.boris-akunin.com/
Translator Andrew Bromfield
Publisher Weidenfield & Nicolson [this translation 2006, original edition 2000]
ISBN 0297852507
Length 295 pages
Format paperback
Book Series #1 in the Sister Pelagia series
Source borrowed from the library

Review: Diamonds for the Dead by Alan Orloff

Posted on by

My first book for the What’s In a Name #4 challenge counts as a book with jewelry or a gem in the title.

Josh Handleman has just caught his wife sleeping with his business partner and now he’s come home to Virginia to organise the funeral for his father who died unexpectedly by falling down the stairs in the family home. While struggling with the details of arranging the funeral, sitting Shiva and eating bad casseroles prepared by well-meaning people Josh starts to become troubled by some of the things he hears about his father, known as Honest Abe in the local business and Jewish communities. He tries to ignore the claims of his father’s oldest friend who is convinced that Abe was killed by the man who he’d let live in a spare room in the house but when he discovers that his dad’s collection of diamonds is missing he begins to wonder if there is more to the death than first appearances suggested.

The thing that I most enjoyed about this novel had nothing really to do with the mystery at all. I liked the exploration of the way Josh dealt with not really knowing his father terribly well and having to learn some of his secrets only after his death. There was a genuineness to the relationship here where those involved struggled to demonstrate their love for each other amidst the awkwardness of learning how to relate to each other as adults in addition to being parent and child. At times Josh borders on being a bit of a whiner about his father and other problems in his life but right through the novel he is a credible character, thoughtfully depicted and largely likable.

On the mystery front the book is well-plotted, if perhaps a little slow to get going. However the last two-thirds flew by for me, with a believable mixture of potential culprits and red herrings introduced via Josh’s continued uncovering of his father’s charitable and business interests. Importantly for me the book didn’t go in any of the ways I might have predicted at the outset given the prominence of Russian Jews and elderly Jews in the storyline (neither the Holocaust nor the Russian mob got a mention thankfully).

Diamonds for the Dead is another one of those books in which the inclusion of a map would have helped as several key action sequences took place in complicated geography that I struggled to visualise but on the whole this is an entertaining, fast-paced read and I will be looking forward to the author’s next release, a mystery set in a comedy club due later this year.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Diamonds for the Dead has been reviewed at Mad Maxisms

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3/5
Author website http://www.alanorloff.com/
Publisher Midnight Ink [2010]
ISBN 9780738723723
Length 254 pages
Format eBook (ePub)
Book Series standalone (?)
Source I bought it

Review: Winterland by Alan Glynn

Posted on by

Winterland opens with the gangland-style murder of young Noel Rafferty in the beer garden of a Dublin pub. His family, including his aunts and one uncle, gather at his grief-stricken mother’s home to offer their support, though given his shady dealings in things criminal no one is terribly surprised that Noel’s life has ended in such a way.  His youngest Aunt, Gina, was closer to him in age than she is to any of her siblings but she hardly ever saw her nephew, having grown weary of hearing about the trouble he has gotten into. However, when another member of the family dies on the same evening Gina starts to wonder if there isn’t something far more sinister at play.

I loved the way the story is constructed. It’s almost more like a play in the way action moves from one setting to another. At the beginning of each set piece you think things are going to unfold in a particular way but Glynn manages to twist and turn things very cleverly so that virtually nothing you expect to happen eventuates, while surprises happen all the way along. Of course it doesn’t hurt that the entire story takes place against the backdrop of a very modern Ireland seemingly at the exact moment when the country’s status as the Celtic tiger of the world economy was coming grievously unstuck and those with any political clout at all were doing whatever it took to stay afloat. This gives the book both intensity and a truly contemporary feel. You really do feel like you might be reading the real story behind the news headlines.

There are two main characters who carry the story and both of them are brilliantly drawn. Gina Rafferty becomes increasingly angry but she doesn’t automatically know how to channel her misgivings and rage so she makes mistakes, some of which are deadly. Her yearning to do the right thing by her family member is palpable though and she does not give up even when it seems like the only way to save her life. The other character who we see most of is Paddy Norton, a property developer and political player from the old days who is still playing puppet master to today’s political elite. His need to have things happen the way he wants them to drives everything he does and watching him deal with the fallout when things go awry is mesmerizing.

There are other brilliant characters and enough stories within stories that a lesser writer would have lost several of the threads but Glynn holds this all together superbly. It is probably misleading to label this crime fiction as it has few of the conventions of the genre and, sadly enough, the label will turn some people off. This is one of those books that defies easy categorisation and is recommended to anyone who enjoys great writing, compelling story-telling and terrific characters.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I read this as my first book to count towards the Ireland Reading Challenge 2011

Winterland has been reviewed at Petrona and Reading Matters.

Keishon at Just Another Crime Fiction Blog also discussed it last year after not finishing the book. Her post and the comments it generated also make terrific reading about the nature and value of book reviewing in the modern world.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 4/5
Publisher Faber and Faber [this edition 2010, original edition 2009]
ISBN 9780571250042
Length 468 pages
Format paperback
Book Series standalone
Source I bought it

Review: Pandaemonium by Christopher Brookmyre

Posted on by

I have been reading pretty solidly for 39 years and by now I have a fairly good idea of the kinds of books I like and the kinds of ones I don’t. But not wanting to be entirely predictable I occasionally try something that I think will not be my sort of thing. Just in case. Usually this works out as expected. For example I thought Eat, Pray, Love would be utter pants and it was. But there was a slim chance that it might not have been so I gave it a go. For another example I didn’t really expect to like a horror story in which most of the plot is driven by teenagers (horror being something I grew out of when I was about 20) (around the time I last had a lot to do with teenagers en masse). But in this instance the slim chance was in my favour. I loved Pandaemonium.

The story is a simple one. The senior students of St Peter’s Catholic High School are taken on retreat to a remote spot in the Scottish highlands because one of their classmates stabbed another one of their classmates to death and someone in authority thinks that a bit of hiking is just the thing to get them all over their ordeal. Unfortunately their camp site is next door to a mysterious Ministry of Defence facility at which experimentation goes awry in a major way and the gates of somewhere closely resembling Hell are opened to unleash creatures intent on killing all humans they encounter. The kids therefore have to stop their dancing and snogging and fight for their lives with not much more than their wits and a rolled up tea towel.

A little bit more than half of the story takes place before the fighting of monsters begins which should be a point against the book but Brookmyre takes care to paint such vivid and varied portraits of the children, their teachers and even some of the military types that by the time the monster-fighting started I was heavily invested in the survival of the characters. Their secrets, heartaches, crushes and worries are so credibly human that you can’t help but fall in love with them collectively and hope they’ll triumph over the daemons which you know are just around the corner.

And while on a surface level the language and the violence (I’ll be honest, neither are for the faint-hearted) might lead some to think the book is just cursing and gore there is another level to it. There is the gently laid out moral tale that you wish all teenagers could be made to understand without having to go through the trauma of seeing their friends mutilated beyond recognition. And then there is the deep and very thoughtful questioning of both the trappings of organised religion and the very nature of faith itself. This theme is also not for the faint-hearted though if like me you spent 12 unhappy years in a Catholic girls’ school you just might identify with one of the students and her musings

Most of the time Caitlin can just zone out during mass, let her mind drift so that the tedium passes quicker but occasionally she can’t help but pay attention and that’s when the sheer inanity of it really grates on her cognitive faculties…We believe in one God, the father the almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen, a.k.a the intelligent designer. The Vatican had latterly decided it could accommodate evolution within its view of creation, largely because it could no longer accommodate the embarrassment it was feeling by continuing to do otherwise, but it was adamant that acceptance of evolution didn’t preclude God from having started it. Yes, God set in motion this astronomically complex process but knew all along despite the infinitely branching possibilities created by an incalculable multiplicity of random factors that the end product would be mankind. Begging the question if that was always the plan why did he take the long way round instead of creating mankind right off the bat?…Having waited 9 billion years for earth to form then having held off for another 4 and a half billion for his chosen species to fully evolve he blows his wad early by sending down his Messiah during the Bronze Age? If he wanted us to believe in him and to live by his word couldn’t he have hung on another infinitesimal couple of millennia and sent his miracle working super hero ambassador in the age of broadcast media and other verifiable means of record instead of staking 13 and a half billion years work on the reliability of a few goat herders in an insignificant backwater of a primitive civilization?

Which of course brings us to the writing itself. It is bitingly clever, funny and quick and you sense that every individual word has been carefully considered before being slotted into exactly the right place. How else would a description of teenagers as “sophomoric mind clones pathetically enslaved by the tyranny of cool” come about?

Pandaemonium is undoubtedly not for everyone. If you don’t like rude language, horror-style violence or the questioning of religious dogma then I’d suggest you stay away. But if you can live with those things and enjoy great writing and human characters with all their foibles then give it a go. Even if it doesn’t sound like your kind of thing there’s a slim chance you’ll love it and sometimes taking a risk pays off.

What about the audio book?

Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. Though (confession time) I might be a little biased. It is narrated by a Scottish bloke (Kenny Blyth) and I adore the Scottish accent. Seriously. A Scottish lad could read me the phone book and I would swoon. Heck I’d swoon even if it was a Scottish lassie. But still, it’s a delight to listen to.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 5/5
Author website I couldn’t find one so head to Wikipedia
Narrator Kenny Blyth
Publisher ISIS Audio Books [2009]
ISBN N/A (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 13 hours 3 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series standalone
Source I bought it

Summer finishing early

Posted on by

The Aussie Readers group on Good Reads is hosting a challenge to read books in at least 5 of the listed categories between 1 December 2010 and 28 February 2011 (our summer down here at the bottom of the world). In wanting to do the whole challenge from my existing TBR I’ve managed 8 of the 10 books and am counting the challenge as done as I won’t be reading any books in the other categories even though there’s a month of the season left. Romances are not really my thing and I couldn’t bring myself to read Pillars of the Earth, the only Oprah recommended book I own (I’ve started it twice but lose the will to live long before the 800+ pages are over).

1. Celebrate Australia! Choose one book from our Aussie Readers group bookshelf (from your preferred genre shelf). I read Gabrielle Lord’s Lethal Factor, a scientific procedural based in Canberra and Sydney featuring a dead nun, an anthrax scare and some very scary criminals.

2. Lighten the load! Choose one book from your TBR list. I chose another Aussie crime novel, Brian Kavanagh’s A Canterbury Crime, which is a fun cosy with great historical themes.

3. Choose a book that’s been made into (or referenced in) a movie, TV series or play. I read Robert Harris’ The Ghost which portrays the story of a fictional former British Prime Minister who has an uncanny resemblance to Tony Blair. It was made into a film starring Nicholas Cage in 2010 (though the book was dull enough that I don’t think I’ll be bothered to see the film)

4. Choose a book with a word related to Summer in the title (e.g. Summer, heat, beach, holidays etc., I‘m sure you can think of many examples). Actually I hate summer and my bookshelves reflect this, offering only one title to read, Simon Brett’s The Body on the Beach. The first novel in an English cosy series was populated by good, if not likable, characters.

5. Oprah’s visiting Australia in December. Pick a book from one of Oprah’s Book Lists Skiped this one

6. A few of our group members have just had a baby or are due any second! To help them celebrate choose a new release book from 2010 or 2011 to read. I read (in audio format) the most recent of Chris Grabenstein’s John Ceepak novels, Rolling Thunder which was released in May 2010 and which I have been saving for as long as I could because it’s a long wait for the next one in 2012!

7. Uh Oh!! It’s Schoolies week!!!! Lock up your kids and choose a YA novel to read or a book that features some teenage characters. I read Tom Rob Smith’s The Secret Speech which is not YA but does feature at its centre the character of Zoya, a teenage girl who has been adopted by the man who was partly responsible for the death of her parents. Not surprisingly, she cannot forgive her adoptive parent which causes even more trauma for the family in this second book of a planned trilogy.

8. Ho Ho Ho! Santa’s on his way… Choose a book that has a Christmas/Winter theme or reference to Christmas/Winter/Cold/Ice/Snow in the Title, story or cover. I read Cleo Coyle’s Holiday Grind, set in New York at Christmas time and featuring an unfortunately deceased Santa.

9. Have you checked out the excellent Literature Map Website? Type in the name of a favourite author, choose the author closest to him/her and select one of their books to read.. I typed in Elly Griffiths which because she is a new author only threw up 5 names, one of which was Michael Connelly and I had The Overlook on my TBR pile so finally got around to reading it.

10. It’s Valentine’s Day in February! Choose a book with a touch of Romance. Er. Um. Sipped it.

Review: The Serpent’s Tale by Ariana Franklin

Posted on by

My first book to count towards this year’s historical fiction challenge was published in the US as The Serpent’s Tale and in the UK as The Death Maze.

Adelia Aguilar’s second outing takes place more than a year after we first met her in Mistress of the Art of Death. Prevented from returning to her native Salerno in Italy by King Henry II in case he might need her again she has virtually retired to the English countryside with her trusted friends Mansur and Gyltha and her baby daughter Allie. However when Henry’s mistress Rosamund is murdered she is dragged back into the service of the King by Rowley Picot, now one of Henry’s Bishops but formerly Adelia’s lover. Henry’s wife Eleanor of Aquitaine is accused of murdering Rosamund but Rowley does not believe her to be the murderer and wants Adelia to uncover the truth before the country erupts into the bloody war that would surely result if Henry’s wife was found to have murdered his favourite mistress. On their way to Rosamund’s home Adela’s party discover the body of a young man near the nunnery of Godstow, a case which Adelia is also called on to investigate during the later part of the novel.

Adelia is still my favourite thing about the series and here her behaviour is probably more believable than it was in the first book as her willingness to put herself in danger is tempered, a little, by wanting to keep her daughter safe. However she is still fiercely principled and determined to find out the truth of each situation, even if the person at the centre of the event is considered an insignificant nobody. And again Adelia’s place in the world is precariously balanced as she has to continue pretending that it is Mansur who has the medical knowledge because if it was widely known to be her, a mere woman, she would be accused of witchcraft. In fact the role of women in this society continues to be a theme that Franklin explores, here primarily via a storyline in which a young women of high birth is promised to a man she does not love but when she attempts to forge her own life she is thwarted and reminded that she is little more than someone else’s property.

Franklin is a master at using a mixture of fact and fiction, people and place to create a world that she draws readers into. Whether it be lost in the maze that protects Rosamund’s towering home or bailing out the water from the boat being dragged down the nearly frozen Thames or inside the nunnery at Godstow, where for one reason or another all the characters descend for a good portion of the story, I felt like I was there thanks to Franklin’s imagery and period details. I particularly enjoy her portrait of King Henry as a leader so far ahead of everyone else in both thought and practice that he can never achieve everything he wants. It’s an interesting perspective and well-drawn too.

Undoubtedly one of the downsides of producing such an assured debut is living up to that standard and, for me at least, The Serpent’s Tale didn’t quite manage it. With two seemingly unconnected murders and a lot of other extraneous events it just didn’t feel quite as tightly written and suspense-filled to me, though the main thread was quite fascinating and certainly got dramatic towards the end. However, being slightly less than utterly brilliant still makes for a very entertaining novel that I highly recommend to fans of historical fiction.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The Serpent’s Tale has been reviewed at Euro Crime three times (1, 2, 3) and at Jen’s Book Thoughts

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 4/5
Author website http://www.arianafranklin.com/
Publisher Berkley Books [2008]
ISBN 9780425225745
Length 386 pages
Format trade paperback
Book Series #2 in the Adelia Aguilar/Mistress of the art of death series
Source I bought it

Are you Fair Dinkum about your Australian Crime fiction?

Posted on by

courtesy stock.xchng.comWe are. Kerrie (of Mysteries in Paradise) and I have revamped our ‘other’ blog and are re-launching it today (Australia Day here in Oz) as Fair Dinkum Crime.

The blog will be the (well a) place to go for reviews of Australian crime fiction (anything by an Australian author or set in Australia) and we’ll also be including news, new release information and author interviews.

Fair dinkum is an Australian colloquial phrase which means genuine or true. As in,

“Is that a fake Rolex you’re wearing?”

“Na, it’s fair dinkum, mate”.

Its first recorded use in Australian writing was in 1888′s Robbery Under Arms, a novel in which a bushranger on death row recounts his life experiences including his life of crime. A fitting phrase for a crime fiction blog, no?

Please join us at Fair Dinkum Crime and bookmark us or subscribe so you can keep up to date with great suggestions for Australian crime fiction reading.

And Happy Australia Day to you all. Tradition demands that you stop work (even the unpaid kind like cleaning your house), have a beer (or tipple of choice) and relax. A good book is optional but highly recommended :)

Crime Fiction Alphabet: C is for Clergy

Posted on by

As I picked up my first book for the East European Reading Challenge, which features a sleuthing nun in 19th century Russia, it struck me that religious folk of one sort or another seem to pop up rather a lot in crime fiction. This is probably understandable to an extent when it comes to historical times as people in clerical roles were often the ones with greater education and more resources than the average person would have had. I’m not sure what explains the attraction of clerical sleuths in more modern crime fiction stories. What do you think?

Historical clergy/sleuths

Sir Derek Jacobi as Cadfael

One of the most well-known of the clerical sleuths from history is Ellis Peters’ creation Brother Cadfael, a Benedictine monk and herbalist living in Shrewsbury Abbey during the first half of the 12th Century. Having come to the clerical life in his 40′s and after periods as a soldier and sailor, Cadfael is a little more worldly-wise than his fellow monks however there is a strong element of faith in the character too, demonstrated through his many acts of help and kindness provided to those in need. I must admit I’ve only read one of the books (so far), A Morbid Taste for Bones, but was introduced to the character through watching Derek Jacobi in the title role of the television series which is one of those rare ones that has done justice to its source material.

The novel that prompted this post is Boris Akunin‘s Sister Palagia and the White Bulldog which is the first of 3 novels to feature the nun. In Russia during the final years of the 19th Century the young nun is sent to investigate the poisoning of a rare bulldog in a remote part of the country. She soon comes to believe that dogs are being poisoned as a means of killing their devoted owner. I am about a third of the way through the novel so far and religion is certainly playing its part in the story but I’m not sure how much impact overall it will have.

Peter Tremayne has a long running series featuring a nun and legal advocate in 7th Century Ireland which has proved so popular it has inspired the creation of the International Sister Fidelma Society. I haven’t read any of this series yet but do have A Prayer for the Damned in my TBR pile which looks to be from late in the series as Fidelma’s plans to marry are thrown into disarray when an unpopular Abbott who is demanding that she uphold her religious vows is murdered.

Caroline Roe has a series set in the 1350′s in Spain which features a blind physician, Isaac of Girona, who investigate crimes often with the assistance of the city’s Bishop. In Remedy for Treason the city is in the grip of the plague when a nun is found dead at the public baths in strange circumstances and the Bishop calls on Isaac to investigate.

Modern clergy/sleuths

The first of the modern clerical sleuths is probably G K Chesterton‘s Father Brown who first appeared in 1911′s The Innocence of Father Brown, a collection of 12 short stories featuring the priest who Chesterton apparently based in part on the priest who tutored him through his own conversion to Catholicism. Father Brown is an intuitive detective who uses the information he has gained from observing people and hearing their inner most secrets during confession to deduce the culprits of the crimes he investigates. and there is often a real spiritual element to his denouements.

Although he is known for historical fiction standalones too, it is Phil Rickman’s modern series that features a cleric. Merrily Watkins  is an Anglican priest and single mum living near the Welsh border in England. She has featured in 11 novels so far, starting with 1998′s The Wine of Angels in which she takes up her new role as the vicar of Ledwardine and finds pagan influences in the town and a possible haunting by a 17th century murder victim. On the subject of writing a clerical mystery Rickman says (from his website)

“If you’d told me twelve years ago that I’d be writing a whole series of books about a woman priest, I might have thrown you out and barred all the doors…It took a long time for me to accept that if I was looking for a world of uncertainty, insecurity and paranoia, a woman priest was exactly what I needed. Especially one appointed to the post of Deliverance Consultant – or, as it used to be known, Diocesan Exorcist”.

Clare Ferguson is the newly ordained episcopal priest of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in upstate New York in Julia Spencer-Flemming‘s debut novel In the Bleak Midwinter. She discovers a baby on the back steps of the church and is soon investigating a murder which seems to be associated with the abandoned baby. Clare is somewhat unorthodox in her approach to religion but her faith is tested when she falls in love with the married chief of police.

There are several religious issues explored alongside the investigation of a murder in Joseph Telushkin‘s The Unorthodox Murder of Rabbi Wahl. A young rabbi, Daniel Winter is provided information which is not given to police and so he runs a parallel investigation to the official one. This idea of people telling their religious leaders things they might tell police is a common one in these clerical mysteries.

Being a prison chaplain gives John Jordan an interesting perspective on crime. In 2004′s Blood of the Lamb by Michael Lister he investigates the murder of the daughter of an ex-con turned TV evangelist who is giving a service in the Florida prison in which Jordan works when his daughter is murdered there. The story causes Jordan to question his own faith and beliefs as well as troubling his newly acquired sobriety.

Irene Allen‘s short series of books features Elizabeth Elliot who is Clerk of a Quaker Meeting House in Massachusetts. In the second novel of the series, Quaker Witness, Elliot becomes involved with the case of a young college student who has filed a complaint of sexual harassment against her professor and then becomes a suspect when he is murdered.

Do you like reading crime fiction featuring a member of the clergy? Do you know of any other clerical crime fiction I should be checking out? It would be especially interesting to find some sleuths of different faiths other than the predominantly Christian ones I have read about.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is hosting the crime fiction alphabet meme which requires the posting of an article relating to the letter of the week (a book title, an author name, a subject…) Do join in the fun by reading the posts and/or contributing one of your own. You don’t have to write every week.

This is the second round of the meme which was first run from late 2009 to early 2010. My contributions that time were discussions of books with one word titles.

Review: The Body on the Beach by Simon Brett

Posted on by

As part of the Good Reads Aussie Readers Summer Reading challenge I needed to read a book with a word related to summer in the title. As I’m using my TBR pile for the whole challenge my only option was this book with the word beach in the title as I had nothing else summer-y to read (I’m not a fan of the season so this is not surprising).

Carole Seddon is not someone I’d like to meet in real life. In her 50′s and retired from a job in the Home Office she has established a very orderly life for herself in the village of Fethering. She has a long list of rules about what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable behaviours and seems to judge people on the most insignificant of factors. As this book opens she is walking her dog Gulliver on the beach when they discover a body. After making her way home and washing the dog Carole notifies the Police but when they look in the spot Carole has described there is no body. Being a little shocked at finding a body and at having been treated like a silly old lady by the Police, Carole takes the unusual step of talking to her new neighbour about the events.

Jude (just Jude, no surname) is the woman who has moved in next door to Carole and is her complete opposite in terms of personality. She has no set rules for acceptable behaviour as can be evidenced by her ordering large glasses of wine (sometimes at lunch time) and beating her rugs in the front garden! But though Jude isn’t ‘a Fethering sort of person at all’ she listens to Carole and doesn’t think she’s crazy so the two women embark on a friendship of sorts and decide to investigate what happened to the body they are both convinced that Carole saw. Through a series of orchestrated meetings with key players in the village they start to build up a picture of what might have gone on.

As the setting is described in a fair amount of detail the story here is slow to get going but once it does there’s a nice build up of suspense, though the plot is not terribly difficult to work out for people who’ve read a lot of crime fiction. However if English village mysteries are your thing then I think you’d really enjoy this book as Brett has done a great job of depicting the place and its various characters so that not all is as idyllic as it might first appear. Somewhat unusually for this kind of story the motive for murder and associated covering up activities is really very credible when finally revealed.

There are a further 11 books (so far) in this series and because there are hints that Carole’s very prim and proper personality might be weakening towards the end of this book I could be tempted to read another if for no other reason than to find out if she does join the human race after all. The Body on the Beach certainly has decent plotting, an intricately drawn setting and credible, if not likable, characters to recommend it as a promising start to a series.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3/5
Author website http://www.simonbrett.com/
Publisher Macmillan [2000]
ISBN 0330376969
Length 327 pages
Format mass market paperback
Book Series #1 in the Fethering series
Source I mooched it