IT’S THREE WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS. AND INSIDE BROMGROVE CATHEDRAL, A KILLER IS HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT.
Local teacher Suzanne Hayne is dedicated, devout — and very, very dead. Snow is falling. Mulled wine is warming. Christmas is coming. But Suzanne’s body lies sprawled inside Bromgrove Cathedral’s relics centre, strangled to death.
Detective Gil Markham is called in to investigate, and soon discovers the dead woman had a remarkable talent for making enemies. The former director she helped push out of a job. The teacher sacked after a complaint she made. Colleagues who called her a meddling busybody behind her back. And an anti-religion campaigner, who despises everything the centre stands for. Any one of them might have hated her enough to kill.
But as the bells ring out for Advent, Markham is running out of time to work out which.
Then a second body is found inside the cathedral, posed as if in prayer. Someone is settling old scores, and the killer isn’t finished — not until the last carol has been sung.
Catherine Moloney is a Liverpool writer of Irish-American heritage. After graduating in Jurisprudence from Jesus College (University of Oxford), she was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn. Despite qualifying as a barrister, her first love was English; this led to a PhD in English Literature at Birkbeck College (University of London). In her academic career, she lectured and published widely on the subject of tuberculosis and nineteenth-century literature, but somehow managed to avoid contracting galloping hypochondria and turned her attention to crime fiction.
My thoughts: I was both fascinated and repulsed by the thought of a display of religious relics – bits of dead saints (supposedly – but considering how many fingers you could buy in the medieval period, who knows) especially as having been raised in the Church of England, we did away with all of that, it’s a bit too close to worshipping icons and the Bible says not to.
The murders however are equally as odd, why was the busy body who put everyone’s backs up and had plenty of people who disliked her, left in front of a relic from St Sebastian? None of her various potential killers will admit they hated her that much – but someone clearly did.
It turns out that some people hold grudges so long that they fester and become pure hatred, revenge driven, angry perhaps at the apparent piety of such an unpleasant person, finally driven to act out their rage.
But first of all Markham and his team have to wade through all of her other enemies, rule them out and eventually set a trap to catch the killer, before they can strike again.
Another excellent outing for this team of detectives, complete with Noakes making the most of every cake, biscuit or funeral buffet along the way and dispensing his unique wisdom as he goes.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
