THE BLACK SERAPHIM. (1984). Michael Gilbert. ****.One of my favorite authors, Michael Gilbert has here woven a mystery tale around the goings-on among the cathedral community in a southern English town. James Scotland is in this small town in an attempt to treat his job burn-out. His section chief in London ordered that he take this rest cure for a month or so to get out from under his heavy work load and cure him of his battle fatigue. He becomes involved with the society that exists around the religious center of the town and the people involved therein. He soon learns that although the separation of church and state is a given in the rest of his daily life, that separation does not exist in this cathedral town. The management of the cathedral affairs have their own problems – most of them dealing with money and how to get more of it. Factions within the church, especially that between the Dean and the Archdeacon, act as a polarizing influence upon all of the clerics and administrators alike. As you might suspect, a murder of one of the clerics occurs that sparks a reaction from the community as a whole that Scotland soon becomes involved in, both as a professional pathologist and as a man who now has love interests for a woman within the religious community. Gilbert carries his tale well, and we are soon wrapped up with both of the two sides of this community, trying to deduce who the murderer was and what the driving forces were that led to such an event. Recommended.
James Scotland, a young pathologist, has been overworking himself and goes to visit a friend in a quiet cathedral town. But the town is in the middle of a heated battle within the cathedral and against the town as well. The dean and the archdeacon are the two opposing forces, and when the archdeacon becomes ill at a large luncheon, not too many folks are sad to learn of his death. But Scotland is not content to ascribe the death to natural causes. It must have been murder; and it will take his skill and his contacts as a forensic pathologist to track down the killer.I really enjoyed this book. It's a little hard to categorize. In some ways, it is a cozy, with the closed range of suspects and the amateur sleuth. In some ways, it is a classic British police story, except that the police are not very well represented. And in some ways, it is a forensic crime mystery. But however I might categorize it, I was very pleased to find that for the first time in a while, I was completely unaware of the identity of the murderer until the very last moment. Nicely done.
