This first in a new series is a charming, warm and witty tale of secrets and murder set among the parishioners of a quaint English village. The No.1 Sunday Times bestselling crime novel, perfect for fans of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club series. Murder Before Evensong is a light-hearted and engaging cosy mystery populated by a cast of bygone English eccentrics who find themselves entangled in a perplexing puzzle that can only be solved by the most tenacious of amateur sleuths. As the series sleuth, Daniel is very clearly the main character in Murder Before Evensong, which translates into him also being the most well-developed character, even if he does start out as something of an everyman. He has a patient, warm-hearted but slightly resigned perspective on his parish and plenty of timely and acute observations to offer. He really comes into his own as an amateur detective following the second murder, which suggests that he’ll be a stronger character from the outset in future books. Daniel’s interactions with his mother Audrey, brother Theo and various elderly parishioners (who do occasionally blur into one) also add a lot of humour to the story. It wasn’t really a decision,” he says. “Something just came into focus. After a while I could see a pattern and an outline and a colour that had been there, but shadowy before. For me, the exposure to Aids was so dreadful. I couldn’t find the place to ask the questions it raised. I was a chorister and I remembered being in chapel. I had thought the doctrine was nonsense, but I loved everything else about it. And when I got to my late 20s and life was really tough, I wanted to connect with it again.”

Canon Daniel Clement was a likeable main character but I couldn’t quite see him as a solver of murders. As always in this type of novel, there were a host of other characters from the nearby Lord of the Manor to the women who run the flower arranging. The most memorable of these was probably Audrey, Canon Clements mother who definitely has her own opinions about what is going on and misses nothing. Most of the other characters were sadly, pretty forgettable. Canon Daniel Clement is Rector of Champton. He has been there for eight years, living at the Rectory alongside his widowed mother – opinionated, fearless, ever-so-slightly annoying Audrey and his two dachshunds, Cosmo and Hilda. When Daniel announces a plan to install a lavatory in church, the parish is suddenly (and unexpectedly) divided: as lines are drawn, long-buried secrets come dangerously close to destroying the apparent calm of the village.One of the most disagreeable habits that Christianity has is of adding public dimensions to your private life,” he says. “So, it was necessary to find some way of describing it. But reality was, of course, not entirely consistent with that. I can say that now because I’ve retired. But we had a relationship — sometimes it was one thing, and sometimes it was another thing. We worked out a way of doing it.” Second, this was like some nineteenth century novel that you got forced to read at school, billed as a funny detective story. There was an interminable amount of detail about the life of a rector, the prayers, the ceremonies, and a lot in Latin which meant nothing to me. In addition, frankly there are absolutely no clues whatsoever to help the reader guess the murderer and the identification of the murderer comes out of left-field. Half of Daniel's (and his mother's) thoughts went straight over my head, too obtuse and loaded with religious terminology. Canon Daniel Clement is Rector of Champton, a small village with its own stately home owned by Bernard de Floures. The most exciting thing to happen in Champton is the argument as to whether the church should install a lavatory or a buttery for the flower arrangers, then Bernard de Floures' alcoholic cousin is found by Daniel, murdered in one of the pews, with a pair of secateurs no less! But no sooner have the press departed to pastures new and the village returned to some sort of normality, than another body is found floating in the lake. The Rector of Champton, Canon Daniel Clement is lives with Audrey, his widowed mother and his two dachshunds, Cosmo and Hilda in the Rectory. The big news in the parish is the announcement of a new toilet in the church which seems to cause more rumpus than anyone expected. Canon Daniel Clement is Rector of Champton, where he lives alongside his widowed mother – opinionated, fearless, ever-so-slightly annoying Audrey – and his two dachshunds, Cosmo and Hilda.

Ultimately we found out who did it because the rector had an amazing moment of insight during his sermon at the funeral for one of the victims. Riiiiiight. Clever bloke! The policemen were portrayed particularly poorly as people who ambled around chatting and drinking tea and never actually doing any crime solving at all. Author Richard Coles is well known in the UK for being a previous member of The Communards and also for appearing on many television shows as a witty and companionable guest, so I was keen to read his first mystery and I was delighted that I found it a really enjoyable read. When Daniel announces a plan to install a lavatory in the church, the parish is suddenly (and unexpectedly) divided: as lines are drawn, long-buried secrets come dangerously close to destroying the apparent calm of the village.So much was over-explained, like the past of characters or the surroundings of an area. This really didn’t add anything to the narrative whatsoever. I still found most characters very bland, their pasts barely reflected who they were in the present. The church events or religious pondering felt particularly unnecessary to the plot. In the early stages of this book the biblical references served to link those stories to the world of Champton. I really liked that approach. Gradually the book resorted to simply telling us all about specific church services. Funerals were written about in a detailed way, complete with Bible quotes, and prayers were written out fully. I get why this is important to Coles, or to Daniel, but it didn’t serve the plot in any way. However, while the sense of place is very good, the sense of time in Murder Before Evensong is more puzzling. In certain places within the story, particularly at the beginning, it could be a contemporary novel, while in other places it could be set in the 1950s, but based on references to television programmes, grocery products and telephone numbers peppered throughout, it must actually be set somewhere towards the end of the 1980s. It would have been helpful if Coles had clearly established the time period from the beginning, rather than leaving it as an unnecessary puzzle that could detract from the flow of the story. The provision of such a convenience might seem like a sensible plan – particularly given those caught short while visiting the church have historically been known to relieve themselves against one of the more secluded outside walls – but it divides the parish like nothing else. The staunchest supporters of the anti-lavatory campaign are the dedicated members of the flower committee, while those in favour of the new facilities include Lord Bernard de Floures and others from the ‘Big House’. Canon Daniel Clementis Rector of Champton. He has been there for eight years, living at the Rectory alongside his widowed mother–opinionated, fearless, ever-so-slightly annoyingAudrey–and his two dachshunds,Cosmo and Hilda. I also could’ve done with some explanation on specific church terms. I’m interested in Protestantism and Catholicism, but didn’t have much knowledge on the Anglican Church. A lot of the terms used I was therefore unfamiliar with. On top of that a lot of vocabulary used I didn’t quite get the hang of either. This is largely due to me not being a native English speaker, or me not being familiar with Latin phrases, but the way the sentences were structured definitely didn’t help either. A lot of (to me seemingly) posh words were bundled up in huge sentences. Initially I re-read these sections, but as I started to realise there wasn’t much important information to be found I started skimming over them instead. It therefore wasn’t as accessible as other cozy crime novels would be.

I feel fairly confident that I will as the characters grow on me the novels will continue to improve. Oh dear, obviously I read a completely different book to all the celebrities who have written glowing endorsements of this book.Canon Daniel Clement is Rector of Champton. He has been there for eight years, living at the Rectory alongside his widowed mother – opinionated, fearless, ever-so-slightly annoying Audrey – and his two dachshunds, Cosmo and Hilda. The book started well and the initial murder was sufficiently well carried out to spark my interest but then the book really sagged. The story wasn’t bad but there was just so much detail that the plot became bogged down. The story was set in the late eighties and this was primarily established by many updates about what Daniel and his mother were watching on TV. There was just too much incidental information that did nothing to give us extra information about the characters or the plot. That points the way to the second volume: threatened pastoral reorganisation has been staved off only temporarily, we sense, and the author hints that it will be resurrected, with murderous consequences. I can hardly wait.