A Dead Man Out of Mind

by Kate Charles

Overview

‘A woman priest at St Margaret’s? Over my dead body!’
Dolly Topping, head of the national organisation ‘Ladies Opposed to Women Priests’ and wife of one of the churchwardens, feels that strongly about it. It is unfortunate, therefore, that Father Julian, the well-loved curate of the Pimlico church, should have been killed in a burglary gone wrong. And doubly unfortunate that the Vicar, upwardly-aspiring William Keble Smythe, should choose to appoint a woman to replace him. From the moment that Rachel Nightingale enters the serene Anglo-Catholic world of St Margaret’s, tempers and emotions run high; Christian charity is not much in evidence, even among those who espouse it loudly.
Then another ‘accidental’ death unites the parishioners in new heights of hypocrisy, and leaves some crying ‘murder’. But David Middleton-Brown is sceptical – until he learns about Father Julian’s death. With the encouragement of the Archdeacon, David and Lucy Kingsley embark on a search for the truth about the ‘dead man out of mind’, and discover more than they ever wanted to know about greed, hypocrisy, ambition – and the cost of love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781910674147
Publisher:	SPCK (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge)
Publication date:	07/16/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	252
Sales rank:	247,045
File size:	804 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Kate Charles, who was described by the Oxford Times as ‘a most English writer’, is in fact an expatriate American, though an unashamedly Anglophilic one. She has a special interest and expertise in clerical mysteries, and lectures frequently on crime novels with church backgrounds. Kate lives in Bedford with her husband and their dog, and is a former Chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association and the Barbara Pym Society.

Editorial Reviews

Scandal surrounds the politics and treasure of an Anglican church in this continuously absorbing mystery, Charles's fourth with a Church of England setting (after A Drink of Deadly Wine). London artist Lucy Kingsley and her live-in boyfriend, solicitor David Middleton-Brown, don't know what the reader has learned in the prologue when David is retained to arrange the sale of some silver belonging to St. Margaret's church: namely, that the former curate of St. Margaret's was bludgeoned to death during an apparent robbery. But they are informed right after the death of Rachel Nightingale, the new-and for obvious reasons, controversial-curate, who is killed in what appears to be a hit-and-run accident. Lucy and David investigate things more deeply, partly in response to a plea from old friends Archdeacon Gabriel Neville and his wife, an old school friend of Rachel. Then, after unwisely blurting out a connection between the two dead curates, an elderly parishioner is brutally murdered. Along with its adroitly drawn main characters, this gripping novel offers a finely etched supporting cast: sleazy churchmen, indiscreet solicitors and surly teenagers. Mystery Guild alternate. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Replete with genteel tone, evocative description, and astute observation, this series title (e.g., The Snares of Death, LJ 11/1/93) should arouse reader demand. Painter Lucy Kingsley and solicitor David Middleton-Brown, her lover, become involved in a scandal surrounding two neighborhood Anglican churches. After an apparent burglar murders a priest, the vicar appoints a controversial female deacon as a replacement. Contentious church wardens, valuable Victorian church silver, Lucy's temperamental niece, and the deacon's vegetative husband deepen the plot. Absorbing.

Library Journal

Charles, a Cincinnatian turned Brit, uses her experience as a former Anglican church administrator to write a devilishly clever little mystery that's chock-full of intrigue, scandal, greed, evil, and all sorts of other nastiness not normally associated with the Church. Artist Lucy Kingsley and solicitor David Middleton-Brown are inadvertently caught up in a baffling case involving a puzzling burglary and not one but three violent murders, all of which seem to have some connection with London's St. Margaret's Church, a set of valuable ecclesiastical silver, and the past lives of the church's young curates. Solving the case is complicated not just by the many conflicting clues and the dead bodies that keep turning up but also by Lucy's 14-year-old niece, who's determined to play amateur sleuth along with David and Lucy. All the "good stuff" is here--an assortment of plausible suspects and motives, plenty of unexpected plot twists, a heaping helping of danger and suspense, and enough red herrings to keep even the sharpest reader off balance. Well written and cleverly plotted, this one's worth adding to all but the smallest collections.

Emily Melton

The latest in a satirical series that the author wickedly calls her "Book of Psalms."...Sensible Lucy and sensitive David make an odd but appealing couple. Ms. Charles's other slightly off-the-beam characters range from the most imperious of deans to the fussiest functionaries, and each one is a treat to find in your pew. -- New York Times Book Review

Marilyn Stasio