Review: MURDER BEFORE EVENSONG, Richard Coles

• 
  this edition published in 2023 by Charnwood
• Made available by my local library
  
• First published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson 2022
• ISBN 978-1-4448-5187-8
• 311 pages
• (The first book in the Canon Clement Mystery series) 
• 2023 British Book Award Crime and Thriller Book of the Year (nominee)
  2023 Paul Torday Memorial Prize (shortlist)
  

Synopsis (publisher)

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.

When Daniel announces a plan to install a lavatory in church, the parish is suddenly (and unexpectedly) divided: as lines are drawn, long-buried secrets come dangerously close to destroying the apparent calm of the village.

And then Anthony Bowness–cousin to Bernard de Floures, patron of Champton–is found dead at the back of the church, stabbed in the neck with a pair of pruning shears.

As the police moves in and the bodies start piling up, Daniel is the only one who can try and keep his fractured community together... and catch a killer.

My Take

An interesting who-dunnit, a cozy really from a very different perspective.

This plot is many stranded: Daniel Clement wants to modernise his church by installing a toilet. Who could object you wonder? The suggestion raises many objections. For a start it would involve the removal of a number of medieval (maybe Victorian copies) pews.  The flower arranging group opposes the suggestion as they have their eyes on the space for their own purposes. But there are more serious objections. 

The church's patron, a member of the House of Lords, has heavy involvement in the affairs of the church, as has his family had for centuries. The lives of the family are inextricably linked to that of the village and the parishioners. And there is one who sees their lives threatened to the point of resolving the issue with murder - not just one but 3...

I liked the central characters, and the way the plot was presented, enough to read another at some time.

My rating: 4.5

About the author

The Reverend Richard Coles is the presenter of SATURDAY LIVE on BBC Radio 4. He is also the only vicar in Britain to have had a number-one hit single and appeared on STRICTLY COME DANCING. He 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 the author of LIVES OF THE IMPROBABLE SAINTS, two memoirs, FATHOMLESS RICHES and BRINGING IN THE SHEAVES, and the Sunday Times bestseller THE MADNESS OF GRIEF. He lives in his parish of Finedon, Northamptonshire.