Ruth Dudley Edwards - Murder in a CathedralHarpercollins - £14.99
For 127 pages the reader might be forgiven for thinking that this is a humorous book of the Tom Sharpe kind. The plot turns on a clash between High Church gays and an incoming dean who is a traditionalist and this is surely rich in comic potential. Caught between the two factions is the new bishop, David Elworthy (worthy of Hell?), a well-meaning and gentle man and a political innocent who is completely out of his depth. The humour is, on occasion, ,genuinely funny, but mostly one senses that the author is straining for effect and her characters resort too frequently to effing and blinding. The chief offender is the coarse-tongued Lady Troutbeck, known to her friends as Jack, who descends on the Cathedral with her trouble shooter Robert Amiss and her cat Plutarch to help the bishop in his time of trouble.
The names of the characters are very much in the comic tradition (e.g. Elworthy, Troutbeck, Wolpurtstone). The investigating detective is Superintendent Godson, while his sergeant, Pooley, is an old Etonian. The blurb claims that the book is "wickedly funny" and parts of it are certainly that, It is not intended simply as a funny book, however, but a detective story, as the title implies, with a humorous element, This seems to be a contemporary trend, though Ms Edwards falls short of the standards set by R,D.Wingfield in his Inspector Frost books. But she is very effective in extracting as much humour as she can out of her camp clergymen with their female names.
There are three deaths in all and everything is resolved satisfactorily et the end, Plutarch the cat, whose behaviour will surprise those readers who have pets, is strangled but somehow survives. It might have been too upsetting if she, too, had died.
The book contains many literary allusions. That in the title is obvious and Ms Edwards is often daring enough not to name the source of some of her allusions as when Father Cecil Davage, known to his friends as Beryl, says "I'll thcreem and thcream and thcream till I'm thick"), But she surprisingly feels the need to mention A,A.Milne. As for John Betjeman, whom she also names, one wonders why she thought him more obscure than Violet Elizabeth Bott. The allusions, however, are al1 apt and add to the enjoyment of the book.
(John Boyles)
