Warm, funny, entertaining murder!

The Famished Parson

by George Bellairs

 

I’m not a fan of the ‘if you like that, then you’ll love this’ type review but I can think of no better shorthand evaluation than to say this puts me in mind of a post-war Midsomer Murders.
Well, that may have put off half of those reading this review, but it may encourage the other half to try a Bellairs novel.

I know it has been said before but so much of modern crime fiction really does revolve around horrific descriptions of mutilation and murder and the twisted serial killers involved. Don’t get me wrong, I do ‘enjoy’ this type of fiction but how nice to pick up a book that doesn’t demand a constitution of iron to read but still is very much a crime novel.

The murder and discovery of the body may be grisly but the focus is not put on the graphic details. The murder is in fact almost incidental, being a device around which to construct a number of puzzles. The main point of the novel is the solving of these clever and entertaining puzzles.

Set in a relatively recent but much more genteel time that now sadly feels like another country, it is very much a novel of its time but is none the worse for that. In fact, how pleasing it is to be able to read a novel set seventy years ago not written by a modern author with a cynical view of the past, imagining how people should have thought, interacted, and reacted to events. Listening to a voice contemporary with the age is for me one of the most interesting and occasionally surprising aspects of this book. However, at its heart, this is still a warm, funny and entertaining story with gentle plotting and gentle (if occasionally black) humour adding to the cosy, reminiscent feel of the book.

This was my first George Bellairs novel and I stumbled across it simply when looking for something worth reading on Kindle Unlimited (quite a task…) Since then, I have found George Bellairs popping up quite a bit in different places and like him enough to already have posted a "review" on this blog.  And I love the covers :)  Defintely worth taking a month free on Unlimited.  Just don't forget to cancel!