Signed in Blood

Mrs. Wentworth came to see Father Bredder with a very disturbing story. She was terrified of being murdered – burned to death – by her husband. She told him of the time her mattress was soaked in gasoline, and other mysterious incidents. She’s even heard her husband’s voice telling her that she must be burned! But how could this be possible? Mrs. Wentworth’s husband, a dentist, has been dead for two months, having died in a traffic accident!

Father Bredder doesn’t brush off Mrs. Wentworth’s story, though – he has a nasty feeling of having spotted Satan’s hand at work in this situation, and he enlists the help of Lieutenant Louis Minardi of the Los Angeles police to investigate Mrs. Wentworth’s story. When the case turns deadly, Father Bredder must investigate who made A Pact with Satan, selling their soul to the Evil One by committing murder…

And Then There Were Nun

There’s a killer somewhere out there on the loose, and he’s targeting the Catholic priests and nuns of Detroit. The murderer leaves his calling card behind at every crime scene: a black rosary left clutched in his victim’s hand. The media is outraged, and are eagerly tracking the Rosary Killer’s every move, putting enormous pressure on the cops to solve the case. Luckily, they have their top man on the job, Lieutenant Koznicki… and he in turn gets some help from some rather unlikely sources, one of them being Father Robert Koesler…

William X. Kienzle’s The Rosary Murders was his first book, and the first Father Koesler mystery. Published in 1979, the book is another entry into serial killer territory, and unfortunately was advertised with the word “mystery”. This is no mystery, this is a thriller. The killer’s identity remains unknown until we find out with everyone else. Father Koesler is not so much a detective as much as he is there at the right place and time. This is just your typical serial killer thriller plot, with the single twist of being set within the Catholic community of Detroit.

It takes a devil to make a saint

A while ago I read Otto Penzler’s The Great Detectives: The World’s Most Celebrated Sleuths Unmasked by Their Authors. It was a wonderful book, with essays from various authors describing the birth of their detectives. And one of the most fascinating essays of the bunch came from a man named Leonard Holton. I’d never heard of him before, but apparently in the 70s, he was known as the creator of Father Joseph Bredder, a detective well-known enough to be included in The Great Detectives.

Immediately I went to the Kindle store. After all, nearly every other author included in The Great Detectives is Kindle-available. But I was met with a blank: as far as Amazon was concerned, Leonard Holton had never existed, and Father Bredder also turned up a blank. So I went on a mission to find something written by Leonard Holton. The mission ended surprisingly early: my ever-reliable local used bookstore, Paperbacks Unlimited, had two Holton novels on the racks inside the store. A few dollars later, I walked out of the store eagerly clutching The Saint Maker and Deliver us from Wolves.

All Aboard the Cliché Train!!!

There’s a certain type of mystery plot out there that is really starting to get on my nerves. The plot isn’t confined to a single sub-genre. The book can be set in a charming English village where an elderly lady plays the role of amateur sleuth. It can just as easily be a tough-as-nails hardboiled story about a tough wise-cracking PI. But for some reason, many authors think it’s a clever idea to use the following twist ending: the killer is gay.

What does the author of such a tale expect me to do? Throw my hands in the air and scream “Oh, my God!!! A gay person!!! I thought they were only mythical creatures that hid in forests, picked berries while the moon was full, and secretly stole pens whenever you needed them!” This twist ending has long outgrown its shock value… and its welcome. And the ending has introduced a brand-new set of clichés to the genre, clichés I’m sick of seeing.

You Reap What You Sow...

WARNING: This review contains a potential spoiler in that I give away something that does not happen when I hoped it would. However, it was impossible to describe my disappointment without this revelation. The reader is warned, but it's something that should have been obvious.

The Reverend Otis Joy is a very, very wicked man. Indeed, his bishop, one Marcus Glastonbury, discovers that Joy has been embezzling funds from the Church of England systematically, and there is a deficit of about £15,000. But Marcus Glastonbury wants to ensure there is no public scandal involving the church, and so he makes a fatal mistake. The bishop neglects to tell anyone of his plan visit to Otis Joy, coming more-or-less-inconspicuously on his day off. And so, Otis Joy seizes his opportunity and murders the bishop, making the whole thing look like a suicide. To add credibility to this theory, he makes the bishop look like a sex pervert who jumped into a quarry because of shame.

It’s a jolly start to the story in Peter Lovesey’s The Reaper, and as we soon find out, Otis Joy is not only an embezzler but also a serial killer. People who inconvenience him have a nasty habit of dropping dead and things are no different at his current parish in Foxford. But the police scoff at these stories, shared in the pub: after all, how could a man go and tell his congregation to live their life one way, and then turn around and do something completely different himself? Otis Joy is a man of the cloth: how could he be a serial killer?

Killed in the Fall

G. M. Malliet is a relative newcomer to the mystery-writing scene. Ironically, considering how I recently wrote a rant against the word “cozy”, the title of her first mystery novel was Death of a Cozy Writer. I have yet to read it, but I got a hold of her newest novel, Wicked Autumn.

It is a new series for Malliet, so I haven’t missed out any backstory. The detective is Max Tudor, a former MI5 agent who found God and became a priest in the Anglican Church. He is now vicar of the church at Nether Monkslip, a supposedly idyllic English village in the countryside… which of course is the perfect place for a murder!

The victim was one Wanda Batton-Smythe, and you couldn’t find a much more despicable person on this little planet of ours. She presented a bluff, energetic façade to the world, playing the part of the Grand Dame, complete with a condescending attitude to those she considered her social inferiors. Naturally, she manages to get on everybody’s nerves right before a big autumn festival, and as a result, she gets herself killed. Wanda was famously allergic to peanuts—even people who barely knew her knew about this. She carried an epinephrine injector with her wherever she went as a precaution, and yet, she succumbs to death via her allergy. But why is the injector not in her handbag? And how did someone manage to convince her to eat something with peanuts in it?

Kicking the Habit

Earlier this year, I made my first acquaintance with Catherine Aird by reading His Burial Too. Although I expressed genuine enthusiasm for the locked-room situation and its resolution (which contains a very good trick at its core), I thought the book suffered from a poor sense of pacing, with a second act that dragged interminably on as the detectives investigated trails that were all-too-obviously dead ends. I had hopes that The Religious Body would be an improvement— the plot sounded like a riot and Aird showed an excellent sense of humour that could make such a story enjoyable. The result was not quite what I expected, though…

The Religious Body opens in the Convent of St. Anselm. One of the nuns, Sister Anne, is nowhere to be found, until somebody stumbles over her body at the foot of the cellar stairs. C. D. Sloan arrives with Constable Crosby in tow to investigate, and he decides that all this just doesn’t add up. Eventually, he decides Sister Anne was murdered, and begins to try finding the killer.

The Adventure of the Modern Short Story Collection

Wow, this is my third review in as many days. I’m almost surprised at myself. Anyhow, let’s get to the point: today’s review will be slightly different than usual, because I will be reviewing my first short story collection here, so I will be discussing each story individually and then look at them as a whole. Today’s book is by Hal White, author of The Reverend Dean Mysteries, a book which seems to have gotten considerably favourable reviews. I was intrigued: a modern-day author writing impossible crime stories starring a reverend? (Inconceivable!) I actually communicated with Mr. White through his website before placing an order on this book, and was reassured that the stories didn’t just go for unfair explanations. This encouraged me to order the book, and now I will share my opinions on these tales.