The religious detective, dating back at least to the early 20th century with Melville Davisson Post’s Protestant layman Uncle Abner and G. K. Chesterton’s Roman Catholic priest Father Brown, has continued to occupy a distinguished (and often lucrative) niche in the world of fictional sleuthing.
Most detecting clergy, for whatever reason, have been Catholics (Ralph McInerny’s Father Dowling, William X. Kienzle’s Father Koesler, Andrew Greeley’s Father Blackie Ryan), but there have also been occasional Protestants (Charles Merrill Smith’s Reverend C. P. Randollph) and Jews (Harry Kemelman’s Rabbi David Small). Recently, many historical mysteries have featured members of religious orders, the pioneer being Ellis Peters’s Brother Cadfael. Among currently active series is Peter Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma.
Ironically, as Great Britain in common with much of Europe has grown increasingly secular, religious sleuths have flourished—some medieval, some contemporary, some living in the recent past. The best known, because of the television adaptation Grantchester, recently seen on PBS, may be the Anglican vicar Sidney Chambers, the creation of James Runcie, son of the former archbishop of Canterbury. Father Brown also appears on the small screen in a controversial reworking and updating to the 1950s.
William Brodrick, a onetime Augustinian friar who left the order to become a barrister, has created a Gilbertine monk who took the opposite course, giving up the law to follow the religious life. Father Anselm’s official job in the monastery is beekeeper, shades of Sherlock Holmes. The Discourtesy of Death is his fifth appearance, the first to be published in the United States, a remarkable novel that succeeds both as mystery fiction and exploration of ethical dilemmas. Combining deep moral pondering with generously clued classical detection and pure thriller suspense is no easy task, but Brodrick achieves it. The theological viewpoint of Anselm and his creator is not in doubt, but they certainly don’t pretend that applying it is easy, and readers who disagree can’t claim their view is denied a fair hearing.
The novel’s early scene with Anselm and the Larkwood Priory archivist Brother Bede suggests a much more conventional mystery than the complex, time-shifting narrative that follows. Anselm has become too well-known as an amateur detective, most recently being the subject of a Sunday Times feature, which he would prefer Bede not add to the monastery archives. He has been warned before not to get too much publicity and now fears the prior, Father Andrew, is about to shut down his sleuthing sideline.
Instead, it develops that he is to be given greater freedom to accept cases, beginning with the death of Jennifer Henderson, a paralyzed and terminally ill former ballet dancer who was married to a prominent television personality. Did she die from natural causes, accident, suicide, or, as an anonymous letter suggests, murder? The story develops in leisurely fashion: Not until page 130 do we get an obvious possible explanation for the victim’s death, one that surely has been in any reader’s mind, introduced as a possibility. And the main suspect does not appear in person until past the halfway mark.
Anselm asks musician and jazz club manager Mitch Robson, a former client from his lawyer days (guilty of embezzlement but acquitted), to help investigate the case: “I’d like you to contribute something to the system you flouted. Because whether you like it or not—remorse and forgiveness aside—the law is our only means of restoring order to a disordered world.” Their relationship will remind some readers of Father Brown and the reformed criminal Flambeau: “They found common ground on the subject of oddballs, be they monks or musicians. There were only two truly sensible people left in the world, and they were both seated here in a deserted jazz club.”
This is a very serious book, both as novel of character and ideas, and as detective story. Serving it well is the quality of the writing, describing people and places in inventive ways while finding humor in a subject that badly needs it. Consider Bede’s mixed biblical metaphor on people losing a “simple understanding of right and wrong.”
Or one character’s description of another: “His heart is never on his sleeve, always in a back pocket, and usually of trousers he’s not wearing.” Or the speaking style of an auto mechanic: “His voice was rich and moist, like cake, his tone careless, reminding Anselm of a silk who’d been expelled from Eton. He’d worn the disgrace like a pink carnation.”
A variety of moral dilemmas are addressed: Anselm’s earlier career as a win-at-any-cost barrister; an extralegal assassination that could bring peace to Northern Ireland; the torture of enemies in war; the eating of meat; and, most centrally, the death that could be mercy killing, assisted suicide, accident, or cold-blooded murder. Some of the moral conundrums that emerge recall the work of Josephine Tey: As in both Miss Pym Disposes (1946) and Brat Farrar (1949), a conflicted character wants to tell the truth but hesitates, knowing it will hurt others.
In the closing chapters, as the moral and ethical positions are sorted out, surprise follows surprise in the manner expected of any deftly constructed detective story, each revelation both believable and prepared with clues for attentive readers. The Discourtesy of Death proves that a closely reasoned formal detective story need not falsify character or obviate a serious theme. Indeed, some readers may charge that, in choosing the facts of his plot, William Brodrick stacks the cards to argue for his (and his main character’s) theological stance on the central issue. And indeed he does. But fiction always does that, one way or another—and disagreement, or the possibility of disagreement, should not discourage anyone from giving this novel a chance.
Jon L. Breen is the author, most recently, of The Threat of Nostalgia and Other Stories.
