Death in Holy Orders
(2001)
Blurb:
My review:
A
truly horrible
book. While the first 150 pages are
reasonable, setting up what should have been an interesting problem in
an
unusual background (theological college on East Anglian coast), it soon
degenerate into the usual pretentious, over-long, humourless, plotless
and
boring mess all too typical of her late works. The
murders, despite attempts to make them
interesting through the usual desecration of the corpse (here,
scribbled
caricatures on a mediaeval painting), are dull, with nothing
interesting either
about their execution or detection. The
murderer’s identity is pulled largely out of a hat—or, rather, a cloak
(yes,
Berkele’s Layton Court Mystery failed
to hang its murderer by a hair, but was at least fair-play). The final straw is Dalgliesh’s romantic
involvement with one of the characters, to the accompaniment of much
pointless
symbolism. Execrable.