G.M. Malliet: Wicked Autumn
G.M. Malliet is obviously a devotee of the golden age of mystery – Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham – and she takes the old formula made dear to readers and applies it to the 21st century. This novel especially resembles Ngaio Marsh’s Overture to Death, where a particularly unpleasant village specimen is murdered at the piano warming up for an amateur theatrical. The vicar in Marsh’s novel is described as looking like a “Roman Coin,” while in Malliet’s, the vicar instead resembles the contemporary and dishy Hugh Grant.