A Death in the Parish: The sequel to Murder Before Evensong (Canon Clement Mystery)

Product Information

There are quite a few moments to make you smile too. Daniel attending a football match with Neil Vanloo, the local detective sergeant, and the uproar Daniel causes. There's an unexpected pregnancy, Or Daniel’s visit to a record store. On the heavier side, the book is also rather heavy on religious thought, theory, and philosophy. Maybe that’s just what a reader should expect from a book written by and featuring a priest. And I have to admit that at least some of it was very relevant to the mystery. But I can’t deny that on one or two occasions my eyes glazed over and my mind wandered. As if that wasn’t enough, the parish has been joined with Upper and Lower Badsaddle; so our hero finds himself uncomfortably in harness with an Evangelical colleague who “would insist on [Bible stories] being true in a way that Daniel did not, could not — and anyway he thought we owed the Bible more than the literal truth that those who thought themselves its defenders allowed”. A Death In The Parish contains Evangelical Christians, Goths, dachshund puppies, a mortifying misunderstanding, mediumship, and arson. Problems begin when Daniel Clement becomes involved with a sternly evangelical new co-priest and is drawn into issues surrounding the man's wife and two teenage children. Matters take a turn for the even worse when Daniel and his formidable mother Audrey become co-executors for a local woman's will: a woman with a big, dark secret. And then a teenager is found murdered, his body and its placement bearing all the signs of a ritualistic killing. Richard Coles is really getting into his stride with this second in the series featuring loveable cleric Canon Daniel Clement, his feisty mother Audrey, and the good (and not so good) people of the parish of Champton - now joined with neighbouring Upper and Lower Badsaddle and throwing High Church Daniel into conflict with evangelical new priest, Rev Chris Biddle. The Biddles are not exactly dysfunctional, but there are clearly tensions within the family unit. Joshua is rebelling against family life, and is cynical about his parents’ religious beliefs. Lydia is more accommodating, but has her own behavioural challenges. Meanwhile Daniel finds his own domestic arrangements subject to change as one of his pet dachshunds is about to deliver an unexpected litter.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series, ‘A Murder Before Evensong,’ and I am pleased to say that this was just as good – if not better – than the first mystery featuring Daniel Clement, Rector of Champton, who lives with his mother, Audrey. The book opens with a Sunday lunch at Campton House, where Lord de Floures of the ‘Big House,’ is welcoming the new associate vicar, Chris Biddle, his wife, Sally, and their teenage twins, Joshua and Lydia. Things do not get off to a good start, with the twins being fairly badly behaved and Daniel and Chris not seeing eye to eye about matters in the parish. Not to be too mysterious about it, the murder victim in this book is a teenage boy, killed on an altar in what appears to be a ritualistic manner. He is the son of Richard’s new colleague after the parish boundaries have been altered. From the moment they first meet it is clear that Daniel, our Canon, and Chris, the new arrival don’t see eye to eye when it comes to theological matters. Why anybody would want to kill his teenage son though, is a complete mystery. When I reviewed the previous book – Murder Before Evensong – last year I haplessly accepted that the Rector’s dogs, which I strongly disliked, were probably a selling-point for some readers. It all gets much worse here, and I wonder why no-one in the book says, “Someone with out-of-control dogs who bite people is not in a position to smugly criticize other people’s children”, as Daniel does. Clyde Morton, anti-hero of Viper’s Dream by Jake Lamar (No Exit, ★★★★★), has faith in little except the power of jazz. Sadly, when he leaves his one-horse hometown in Alabama to make it as a musician in Harlem, he proves to be so terrible that his auditioner thinks he’s been sent as a practical joke. So, instead, he ploughs his energies into becoming one of the most successful drug-dealers of the 1930s. Yet when a character muses at one point whether Champton is in danger of turning into St Mary Meade, it's a pertinent question. For all that A Death In The Parish is set in 1989, Champton and its inhabitants - including Daniel himself - seem to be in a time-warp. This book reads very much like something set in the 50s-early 60s - a B&W Ealing film even which, for me, is highly appealing.Two books in, and the Reverend Richard Coles' Champton is now firmly on my list of literary places where I enjoy spending time. The Reverend Richard Coles, has certainly had a portfolio career so far, encompassing roles as a member of a successful band in the 1980s, a long spell as an ordained vicar in the Church of England, and latterly as a reality television star, participating in MasterChef and Strictly Come Dancing among others. I suppose, therefore, that it was inevitable that he might try his hand at writing a novel, and he has also come close to nailing it.

Daniel finds himself entangled in the investigation, uncovering hidden motives, strained relationships, and dark secrets as he seeks to bring the perpetrator to justice. Detective Sergeant Neil Vanloo and Daniel Clement, rector of Champton parish in England, work together to discover who has committed the latest murder. As one local remarked, Champton and district will soon outdo [Agatha Christies’] village of St Mary Mead for the number of deaths.

It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that a story written by a Reverent and featuring a Canon as the main character might be a cozy mystery. Which just goes to show how dangerous it is to assume anything. First off, I grew up in a very involved C of E family in exactly the time period these books are set, and so the internecine conflicts that ravaged the church then - Anglican tradition vs Christian evangelism, the ‘problem’ of female priests - are familiar to me and felt quite cosy and comforting in a way that childhood memories do. However, for those readers not as well versed in scripture and church politics, I can well imagine the detail to which Coles goes into could be dull and alienating. How these conflicts eventually play out in the mystery is also a bit much: while I am absolutely no fan of evangelical Christianity, the way it’s presented here is somewhat beyond belief (trying not to give spoilers….!) PDF / EPUB File Name: A_Death_in_the_Parish_-_Richard_Coles.pdf, A_Death_in_the_Parish_-_Richard_Coles.epub