1997 mystery, seventh in the Robert Amiss series. "Jack" Troutbeck
enlists Amiss to help the new but unworldly Bishop of Westonbury as
his chapter suffers a rift between the high church gay traditionalists
and the intolerant evangelical new dean. Murder is also involved.
As in Ten Lords a-Leaping, Dudley Edwards makes it clear that
there is a right side and a wrong side to be on; but also as in that
book, the right side is largely ineffectual, needing Troutbeck or at
least Amiss to sort them out.
The problem for me is that around the time this book is set I knew
quite a few of the high church gay traditionalists always on the edge
of "going over to Rome", whom Dudley Edwards is parodying here, and
they didn't act anything like these people. They didn't have
flamboyant and blatantly gay-focused articles of worship as part of
the church's decorations; they took the perfectly good high church
style of imagery that already existed, and used that, often with
excessive ornamentation but still in keeping with that style. They
didn't go round trying to pick up random visitors; they usually
managed to have a curate or similar "friend" whom everyone knew about
but nobody fussed over. Basically, they weren't driven by their gonads
anything like as much as the parodies here. That's aside from most of
the people in the book being the sort of mincing queen stereotype that
calls all their gay male friends by female names – which I don't think
has ever been at all usual, even among the sort of gay man who wasn't
having to pass himself off as something else.
And on the other side… well, I suppose Dudley Edwards was unaware of
the gradations among the happy-clappy side of things, though one might
think she might have done some research. The example of a service
drifts around in a vague stylistic cloud encompassing standard
American Baptist and evangelical-charismatic, while never mentioning
the Jesus Army which was still going fairly strong in the UK in those
days – or the desperate opposition to abortion and women's rights in
general which had become just as much a plank of American
evangelicalism at this point as was opposition to homosexuality and
black people. All right, I know a bit more about these things than
most people because I take an interest in this particular brand of
twisted psychology (they started it by trying to take away my
role-playing games), but I feel strongly about getting the details
right; if you just want to feed people's prejudices, tell your unfunny
stories down the pub rather than committing them to print.
Anyway. Rant over. In spite of these problems, the actual story is
pretty decent; various assaults happen, some of them fatal, some of
them perhaps accidental, and one can gradually reduce the possible
reasons and thus the pool of suspects. Dudley Edwards may care more
about her parodies than about the murder plot, but the latter is still
well-served, and the personalities matter to the plot rather than
being incidental.
Though one does feel that the chapter is sadly depleted by the end of
the book, and one wonders what might happen next in Westonbury.
Series recommended by Gus.
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