It was not Daniel’s first brutal death. In his first parish there had been a murder in his first week, and in the years since several had followed, some brought to book, others unproven, perhaps many that had gone unnoticed? More than once he had buried someone whose murderer he was sure was among the pall-bearers. [loc. 1162]
There are two wolves -- sorry, two books -- inside this one: a charming memoir of a rector's life in 1980s rural England (complete with very civilised feuds and lingering shadows of the Second World War), and a murder mystery rooted in wartime life. The two books (or wolves) do not play well together.
The murder mystery relies on plot elements that are only revealed late in the novel. The 1980s setting can perhaps be justified by the WW2 elements of the story, and that peculiar British nostalgia for an idealised vision of life during wartime: though yes, it is amusing that Daniel has never seen a mobile phone in the wild. (I can't help feeling that most of the cultural references -- Wham!, Celine Dion, Upstairs Downstairs, Erasure et cetera, though curiously not the Communards -- will be wasted on anybody under 50, though.) There are some excellent, almost mystical passages as Daniel reflects on the murders, and some evocative character sketches: but there are also some extremely clunky sentences and inadequate punctuation. I didn't hate it, but I didn't think it worked very well as a murder mystery.
Fulfils the ‘Includes a funeral’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.
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