Murder Before Evensong: The instant no. 1 Sunday Times bestseller (Canon Clement Mystery)

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Murder Before Evensong: The instant no. 1 Sunday Times bestseller (Canon Clement Mystery)

Murder Before Evensong: The instant no. 1 Sunday Times bestseller (Canon Clement Mystery)

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He read Theology at King's College London and after ordination worked as a curate in Lincolnshire, London and Northamptonshire.

But the cast is overblown and not terribly distinct en masse, and includes a bunch of people who play no part in the story at all (why did we need the brother? I really wanted to love this book but sadly I found my mind went for a little walk about often while reading it. Violent deaths aside, it's a cosy world of Desert Island Discs, flower rotas and walnut cakes, beautifully written and evocative, run through with the comforting, ancient liturgical rhythms that transport you to Evensong and gentle organ music in a cool country church on a summer's evening. normally that's great at the start so you get a feel of the place and people but not when it's 80 pages of it.

As I love crime novels – Ann Cleeves, Peter Lovesey, Anthony Horowitz, Elly Griffiths - I really wanted to like this, but it was disappointing. Could it be they rushed everything through hoping for instant success on the back of Richard Osman’s excellent Thursday Club series?

I didn't understand why; I can't imagine the cast of characters would really have used that language, so maybe it was just the author showing off. I found it slow, with unwanted detail in some areas (which I assumed would relate to the case, but in fact didn't) and not enough detail to make the identity of the killer, revealed in a rush near the end, matter. We get a good insight into the characters and the novel was well written making it an entertaining read. 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?But between a family of idle aristocrats, embittered clam frogs and the son of a punk-looking Lord, he has a good range of suspects. The plot was good but the ending was rather disappointing and rushed, giving little time or food for thought to enable the reader to speculate on the identity of the murderer. I had no chance of guessing who the killer was and even when it was revealed I still wasn’t sure who they were. But talk soon focuses on the murder of Anthony Bowness when he is discovered dead at the back of the church, stabbed in the neck with a pair of secateurs, This is the start of a spate of deaths in the community as the police race to catch the killer. The beginning of the books spends most time describing the church, the prayers and if they should have a toilet put in.

This is very much a cosy mystery, with the central character, Canon Daniel Clement, Rector of Champton St Mary, with echoes of St Mary Mead, and a cast of characters which includes the Big House and Lord de Floures, as well as Daniel’s widowed mother and his actor brother.

While he sometimes struggles to bring variety to his characters’ voices, his gentle reading nonetheless conveys the rhythms of life in this picture-postcard village, and the contemplative existence of its rector. I like Richard Coles a lot on the radio, but let's be real, this would not have been published if it wasn't by a famous person, still less with the amazing blurbs by other famous people on the back. When the second murder happened I had almost forgotten about the significance of the first, and I had been introduced to so many characters I wasn’t sure who everyone actually was. He is also the only vicar in Britain to have had a number-one hit single and appeared on Strictly Come Dancing .



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