Murder at the Monastery - Richard Coles ***

This is by far my least favourite of Richard Coles 'Canon Clement mysteries'. Let's get the negatives out of the way first. Coles has never been a great mystery writer - his success, particularly with A Death in the Parish (his best so far), was in his engaging description of village and church life in an old-fashioned 1980s parish, which is beautifully observed. But this entry in the series has the weakest murder plot so far - there really is no sense of trying to solve the mystery alongside the detective. Everything is hidden from the reader until the solution is revealed, while the motive and opportunity are both weakly conceived.

The limited mystery content is usually compensated for by the excellent village/church life aspect - but here the main character has retreated (both literally and metaphorically) to the monastery where he was previously a novice, so the social aspects are much more bitty as Coles swaps between what's going on amongst the brethren, general village life, and the activities of the village gentry (plus the main character's mother). As a result nothing much develops in the village. We do see a fair amount of the monastic life, which is the most interesting part of the book - but it's hard not to compare this negatively with Ellis Peters' Cadfael novels which equally give a good feel for the cloistered life (if in a different period) while providing both satisfying mysteries and some history.

All in all it just didn't come together for me - it felt a bit like a 'the other two have been successful, let's rush another one out' book. Hopefully, Coles will develop the inevitable successor rather more effectively than this one.

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