Murder at the National Cathedral (Capital Crimes)

Margaret Truman's mysteries are always a good read. They move quickly, yet have good character development. The reader also has an "insider" look at Washington. For example, many of us will not get to the National Cathedral in person...we were taken on a tour in writing by Ms Truman.

Mac Smith, professor at George Washington University School of Law married Annabel Reed at the National Cathedral. Paul Singletary presided as priest. It was a late in life marriage. They were in the Bethlehem Chapel with 192 people including 30 close friends. Two months later Singletary was in Lambeth to see the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop was part of the conservative wing of the church, Singletary the liberal. Paul worked with drug addicts, runaway teens, the homeless. The Cathedral was the sixth largest in the world. A woman discovers the lifeless body of Paul Singletary in the Cathedral. George St. James, the Bishop, calls Smith. Before the police can be called by the Bishop and Smith they arrive on the scene, summoned by an anonymous woman's call. The dead man has a surprisingly expensive security system at his apartment. He had been a Navy chaplain. A charity in which he had been involved, Word of Peace, has been infiltrated by the security service, the CIA, and by M15 on the British side. Shortly after Singletary died, his friend Priestly, an Englishman, dies too, having been hit over the head with a candlestick. A friend of Singletary, a Miss Morgan, is an undercover agent for M15. Clarissa Morgan is supposed to retire to the British Virgin Islands. It seems that she had fallen in love with her subject, Paul Singletary. The choir director at the Cathedral is about to take a job with a church in San Francisco and has given very short notice. A friend, with CIA contacts, tells Mac Smith that the Bishop should disassociate the Cathedral with the organization, the Word of Peace, since it has become filled with hustlers and secret agents. Next there is an FBI sweep of the Word of Peace functionaries. The charges handed down include extortion, fraud, conspiracy, and spying. An exciting scene transpires in the Cathedral involving Miss Morgan, the canons, Mac Smith and his wife, and a young choir boy. This book is very cinematic.

If you've read one of Margaret Truman's books before, this book will be very similar to that one. And all of her books. Characters are alike from book to book (and the main characters are most of the time the same) and the plot becomes predictable (though not completely) after reading three or four of her books. What changes is the setting. She demonstrates great knowledge for the setting of the National Cathedral, although she does make a couple of understandable inaccuracies. The reader will learn much about the building and organization by reading this entertaining, but also educational and interesting, book.

Margeret Truman has now written several DC crime books, but NONE of them have matched what she did in this effort. This book was truly satsifying from start to end. The way she puts Mac in many situations in a pattern really makes the book a fun read. Most importantly, the book leaves us guessing who did it, the main part of any murder mystery. I cant give it 5 stars because the ending is somewhat anti-climactic, and a tad bit forced in feel.

I would listen to René Auberjonois read the phone book