REVIEW
Mark Bryant (ed) - Sins of the Father - An Anthology of Clerical Crime
Gollancz £15.99
Short story collections have always been popular,the crime short story in particular. There are a number of annual collections,such as Winter’s Crimes and the John Creasey Crime Collectionand the various Ellery Queen anthologies. Most have "Best "in the title: Best Detective, Best Mystery, Best Secret Service and soon. It is a pleasure to find some editor, in this case, Mark Bryant, comingup with a variant and promising title: Sins of the Fathers.
The promise of the title and its aptness is borne out by the first story, "The Hammer of God" by G.K.Chesterton. It is aFather Brown story which is, of course, a guarantee of quality. At this point one might have been forgiven for thinking that, in the stories thatfollowed, one would know who the criminal - perhaps one should say thesinner - was: that is, a man of the cloth. But the second story dispelledsuch a thought. It is a Miss Marple story, "Sanctuary",by Agatha Christie. There is a clergyman in it, but he has a very minorpart and is certainly not a sinner. The fourth story, by J.S.Fletcher,has a false priest and a true priest and the latter, again, is no sinnerbut more sinned against.
The emphasis of the collection is, clearly, not so much on the cleric ason what the editor calls the "heinous evils committed by or against the clergy". He takes pleasure in claiming, rightly, that the subjectmatter of the stories includes the Seven Deadly Sins and features "murder,suicide, exorcism, hidden treasure, ghosts, sex, visions and much more,in locations as varied as Britain, France, Germany, Russia and America,both in cities and in the countryside." He has chosen his stories well, though whether some of the authors would have been happy to havetheir stories included in such a collection is another matter and I amthinking here of Sherwood Anderson, Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov andJohn Galsworthy. It is , nevertheless, a good and varied collection andone appplauds the inclusion of the Sherlock Holmes story, "TheDevil’s Foot", and Le Fanu’s "Green Tea". AndR.H.Barham’s "Grey Dolphin" is an unexpected and pleasant surprise.
(John Boyles)