Murder Before Evensong by Richard Coles

Canon Daniel Clement is Rector of Champton St. Mary, a church in the small village of Champton. When a villager is found murdered in the church everyone becomes a suspect and Daniel works with the local police to uncover the murderer.

Murder Before Evensong has all the hallmarks of a cosy crime; a quaint English village presided over by the Lord of the Manor, a cast of middle-aged/old-aged parishioners who have never even had a parking ticket in their lives, a couple of colourful characters to add a little spice and a crime that has absolutely no motive or suspects.

 Set at the end of the 80's we have a very nostalgic feel to the story and the added bonus that there's no internet or mobile phones. Information is spread via terrestrial TV, newspapers or the local gossips.

I desperately wanted to love this book but really struggled with the writing style. Alongside this the actual murder doesn't take place until almost a third of the way into the book. It was only at this point that I felt the story began to flow, having also got used to the writing style. There were also a vast number of unusual words, thankfully I was reading on my Kindle so could look them up fairly easily.

The character of Canon Daniel Clement, along with his mother and brother, definitely has potential but I do feel the writing needs some tweaks to gain a foothold in the extremely popular cosy crime genre.

Murder Before Evensong by Richard Coles will be published on 9th June 2022 in hardback, ebook and audio format. My thanks to NetGalley and Orion Books for a review copy.