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Canon Daniel Clement is Rector of Champton, a small village with its own stately home owned by Bernard de Floures. The most exciting thing to happen in Champton is the argument as to whether the church should install a lavatory or a buttery for the flower arrangers, then Bernard de Floures' alcoholic cousin is found by Daniel, murdered in one of the pews, with a pair of secateurs no less! But no sooner have the press departed to pastures new and the village returned to some sort of normality, than another body is found floating in the lake. Canon Daniel Clement is Rector of Champton. He has been there for eight years, living at the Rectory alongside his widowed mother – opinionated, fearless, ever-so-slightly annoying Audrey – and his two dachshunds, Cosmo and Hilda. It sounds bad, but the pandemic has been quite good for us,” agrees Phoebe Morgan, editorial director of HarperCollins. “Particularly in the commercial area of the market. Obviously there have been times where things have been difficult – and especially for the authors. But it has also shown that there’s a bigger appetite for reading than ever.”
Richard Coles is one of the most sparkling, entertaining, clever and lovable people in public life, as rare and precious to British culture as a Norman cathedral. * Victoria Coren Mitchell * Richard Osman … his debut novel The Thursday Murder Club has been a big hit. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Guardian A wry, tongue-in cheek and whimsical debut with more than a trace of G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown... charming. -- Geoffrey Wansell * DAILY MAIL * I found Canon Clement to be a bit of a non-entity. He's not quite as mean-spirited and whiny as his fellow fictional rev-sleuth Sidney Chambers, but apart from "fed up with certain members of the family" and "a little creative with parish statistics" he doesn't seem to have much personality. (His mother and brother on the other hand would make an excellent sleuthing team...)Devotees of Midsomer Murders and Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories will feel most at home here’ Guardian You slowly become aware of something: the book is full of Filofaxes and there are no computers around, and the date finally settles itself, by means of a Eurovision reference, at 1988, when Richard Coles was far from being a vicar himself – he had been part of a very successful pop group, The Communards, which broke up that year. The village setting is well done, and the detail of the rector’s life is interesting and presumably authentic. First, when exactly was this book set, I'm sure if I could be bothered to piece together the clues I could work it out, late 1980s/early 1990s? There is no indication (that I can see) as to when it is set, which is hugely discombobulating to the reader who imagines it must be present day. Once the shops were closed, publishing was unusually well positioned to capitalise, argues Stone. “Even before the pandemic, online retail accounted for about 50% of the books market, so book consumers were pretty used to buying online.”
Books had a real moment,” says Hannah Bourton, publishing director at Viking, which scored the big hit of the pandemic with Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club. “They were immediate, they were accessible. We all wanted to escape into different stories.” The UK doubled the amount of time it spent reading books, from 3.5 hours to six hours a week Author Richard Coles is well known in the UK for being a previous member of The Communards and also for appearing on many television shows as a witty and companionable guest, so I was keen to read his first mystery and I was delighted that I found it a really enjoyable read.So much was over-explained, like the past of characters or the surroundings of an area. This really didn’t add anything to the narrative whatsoever. I still found most characters very bland, their pasts barely reflected who they were in the present. The church events or religious pondering felt particularly unnecessary to the plot. In the early stages of this book the biblical references served to link those stories to the world of Champton. I really liked that approach. Gradually the book resorted to simply telling us all about specific church services. Funerals were written about in a detailed way, complete with Bible quotes, and prayers were written out fully. I get why this is important to Coles, or to Daniel, but it didn’t serve the plot in any way. Coles read theology at King's College London, and after ordination worked as a curate in Lincolnshire and subsequently at St Paul's Church in Knightsbridge, London. He is also the only vicar in Britain to have had a numberone hit single and appeared on “Strictly Come Dancing”. The presenter of “Saturday Live” on BBC Radio 4, he is alsothe author of Lives of the Improbable Saints, two memoirs – Fathomless Riches and Bringing in the Sheaves – and The Madness of Grief,all published by Orion. There is a motive, however, and, when I thought my eyes couldn’t roll anymore, after the reverend’s sudden realisation of who the murderer is, they still rolled some more as I read about the motive for the murders.
Even so, many people – myself included – found that they couldn’t necessarily follow through on their grand ambitions. “I heard a lot of people say that now was the time to read all of the books that they’d always meant to read, or finally sit down and write their novel,” says Damian Barr, the author of Maggie and Me and presenter of the Big Scottish Book Club. “But what I found was that the constant state of emergency really fractured my ability to concentrate.” He turned to poetry instead: Mary Oliver, Mark Doty, Richard Scott. “I found poetry meaningful and sustaining but short enough that I could manage it.” Personally, I abandoned Dostoevsky pretty swiftly, and soon found my level was the odd audiobook and as many Inspector Maigret mysteries as I could lay my hands on. Reverend Richard Coles on loving and losing his partner David: ‘The world was shattered and I was blown up’ 29 March, 2021 It does have similarities with Richard Osman’s book – a light but not silly tone, and some good-heartedness – and should have an authenticity advantage: after all, Richard Osman doesn’t live in a retirement village and isn’t an ex-spy as far as we know. But Evensong is not as accomplished as the Osman series and is unlikely to achieve similarly massive sales – although who can predict the appetite for crime books by celebrity vicars?It was bad. I already mentioned the indistinguishable characters, but what about the poor dialogues? They were terrible. Devotees of Midsomer Murders and Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories will feel most at home here’ Even better than I knew it would be. Really well plotted... beautifully written, charming without being twee, funny, intelligent and mordant too. It's cosy, yes, but waaay better than cosy crime suggests. -- India Knight * SUNDAY TIMES * Canon Daniel Clement is Rector of Champton, where he lives alongside his widowed mother – opinionated, fearless, ever-so-slightly annoying Audrey – and his two dachshunds, Cosmo and Hilda. Reni Eddo-Lodge, author of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer
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