A Death in the Parish - Richard Coles *****

In reviewing the first of Richard Coles' murder mysteries, Murder before Evensong, I remarked 'I just hope that with practice Coles can make the detective aspect more engaging'. He doesn't. In fact, although a murder is a thread running through this book, it's almost incidental - yet I didn't care because the murder mystery aspect is not really the point.

A Death in the Parish gives us two things that Coles does brilliantly: exploring the nature of British village life in the 1980s, when the country was going through a significant culture change as the old respect for authority was dying out, and giving us a novel with a realistic vicar as a central character, as opposed to the clumsy stereotypes we usually seen in fiction.

I don't know if this was Coles' conscious intent, but the 'cosy murder' part feels like little more than a way to get more readers, because there is far less of a market for a novel about the realities of village life and the Church of England. And as my personal fictional matter is largely limited to police procedurals, science fiction and fantasy, I would be unlikely to pick up such a book. But I'm so glad I did.

I've lived in a village off and on through my life, and Coles really gets into the spirit of such a place with both its petty playing off of characters against each other and its unmatched sense of community and continuity, however faded it might be. I'm also very familiar with the Church of England (Anglican/Episcopalian for those who haven't come across it), an institution that may be dying, but that is so central to the English cultural heritage.

As a retired vicar, Coles is ideally placed to understand the niceties of church politics - particularly when he pits his traditionalist, Anglo-catholic central character against a colleague whose ideas are far too evangelical and Bible-literalist for his liking.

You don't expect cosy murder mysteries to be un-put-downable, but I rushed through this book, soaking up the atmosphere and revelling in Coles' understanding of the sense of place and the impact on institutions of culture change. The cover quote saying 'Best of the new cosy crime writers' totally misses the point. It's very average crime writing, but it's an excellent novel.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

You can buy A Death in the Parish from Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com and Bookshop.org

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Comments

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...

Search This Blog