{"id":1462,"date":"2014-09-30T14:31:32","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T20:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1462"},"modified":"2014-09-30T14:32:13","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T20:32:13","slug":"g-m-malliet-demon-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/g-m-malliet-demon-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"G.M. Malliet: A Demon Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"demonsummer\"<\/a>Of all cozy writers, I think Malliet has the purest, most elegant prose. \u00a0Her writing is a joy to read. \u00a0That alone would set her books apart, but she\u2019s also deliciously re-visiting the British village mystery and making it her own, to the delight of mystery fans everywhere. \u00a0My customers have quickly made her Max Tudor series a favorite.<\/p>\n

So far she\u2019s used seasonal titles and in this one she\u2019s up to her last season, summer, as she spins a tale set inside a convent. \u00a0Max, the vicar of Nether Monkslip, has been asked by his bishop to look into a mysterious fruitcake poisoning originating in the convent of the Handmaids of St. Lucy. \u00a0The fruitcake is a bit of a specialty and the victim was the unpleasant Lord Lislelivit, happily recovered but angry and demanding answers.<\/p>\n

Max is worried the bishop will discover his fianc\u00e9e, Awena, is heavily pregnant, and that they aren\u2019t yet married. \u00a0With this thought at the forefront of his mind, it\u2019s with reluctance that he leaves Awena at home to begin a discreet investigation. \u00a0The nuns know why he\u2019s there, of course, and Malliet utilizes the extremely traditional trope of his interviewing each suspect in turn.<\/p>\n

This allows her to give the reader an insider view of the workings of the convent and the duties fulfilled by each sister \u2013 the kitcheness, the librarian, the infirmaress, the abbess, the novice, and so on \u2013 and in this way she\u2019s able to tell her story, which of course includes the murder of Lord Lislelivit. \u00a0He\u2019s the most unpleasant man on canvas, and so of course he has to go.<\/p>\n

With the arrival of the police, the nuns draw in their skirts, as it were, but of course they are forced to cooperate with the authorities. \u00a0This is basically a locked room mystery as only someone inside the convent could have committed the murder. \u00a0Malliet adds to her suspect pool by including some guests on retreat (of which Lord Lislelivit was one), and so she is also able to fold the wider world into her story.<\/p>\n

As Max investigates the gentle, contemplative life of the nuns, where prayer is the highest priority, he also uncovers some financial shuffling about on the part of the nuns and some connections, past and present, which eventually help him solve the crime.<\/p>\n

While Malliet hews very closely to the Agatha Christie model we are all so familiar with, she\u2019s made it more contemporary by supplying some psychological depth and reason for the characters to do the things they do. \u00a0She has a shade of darkness to her storytelling, not as grim as P.D. James\u2019 or Ruth Rendell\u2019s, but still it gives her stories an extra bit of distinction.<\/p>\n

Unlike James and Rendell, she\u2019s willing to have a happy ending, and this book ends with the union of Awena and Max in a very satisfactory fashion for the readers who have been following their courtship through now four books. \u00a0She\u2019s also given the reader a bird\u2019s eye view into the life of an Anglican convent. \u00a0All in all, a more than enjoyable read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of all cozy writers, I think Malliet has the purest, most elegant prose. \u00a0Her writing is a joy to read. \u00a0That alone would set her books apart, but she\u2019s also deliciously re-visiting the British village mystery and making it her own, to the delight of mystery fans everywhere. \u00a0My customers have quickly made her Max … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-1462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-british"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1462"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1465,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions\/1465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}