Clerical Errors

I may be taken with this book due to the fact that I was reared in an area where you are more likely to have a poisonous snake waved at you in a religious ceremony than a censer. Most of my experience of the Anglican religion has been fictional hard riding 18th-19th century clerics or fictional vague parsons with bodies in their libraries. Fictional Anglican politics as set forth by Greenwood is an entertaining surprise. Oh, yeah, and there is a murder also. The characters are good. The writing is a pleasure to read. I'm not sure that this is the first in this series. There is another book, Unholy Ghosts, that might be the first volume. However, I am looking forward to reading more about the Deaconess Braithwaite and the Church she serves.

I stumbled onto "Clerical Errors" in a secondhand book shop and was delighted. D. M. Greenwood is a novelist who writes well, understands the Anglican Church, and has a well-honed sense of evil. She also has created a winner in her low-key detective, Deacon Theodora Braithwaite, who serves in the fictional Diocese of Medewich. These attributes all have the makings of an outstanding mystery series. Alas, Ms. Greenwood also suffers from some of the negative characteristics of a first novelist -- namely an over-complicated plot, scant motivation for her amateur detectives to go it alone, and a not-quite-believable resolution. I still rate the book highly, though, and will be on the lookout for the two other novels in this series begun in the early 1990s. I'm sorry Greenwood didn't continue her efforts after the third. If nothing more, I'd like to know if Theodora was ever ordained to the priesthood, since at the time this novel was written, women couldn't advance beyond the diaconate in the Church of England.