Comments on: Religious Mysteries

By: Sally Thomas

Sally Thomas — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 22:09:27 +0000

Oh, yes, lots of Muriel Spark would count, if we’re painting with a broad brush: A Far Cry from Kensington and Memento Mori come to mind. They’re not mysteries in the “whodunnit” sense, but in the “intrusion of mystery, hand-in-hand with death, into life” sense.

By: Margaret

Margaret — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 16:15:43 +0000

I nominate Muriel Spark’s SYMPOSIUM. Other readers have noted a consciousness of evil lurking under the surface, compared this aspect with Evelyn Waugh’s works, and attributed it to a Catholic perspective. The murder is just one of the crimes and sins recounted in the book. In her funny but alarming portrayal of an Anglican convent (filled with foul-mouthed Marxist nuns), I was reminded of Flannery O’Connor’s books.

I suppose SYMPOSIUM is a mystery book the way GOSFORD PARK is a mystery film. It is, but it is much more than that.

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:25:35 +0000

To be terribly egotistical, those readers with not enough to do could look up my ‘On the Square’ pieces on Christie, John Buchan and Dorothy Sayers.

Christie brought a genuine Christian sensibility to her work, which can be seen best in contrast to her peers Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham, whose works move in the same circles but without the same overt religious influences. To be fair to Allingham, she did produce one of the finest depictions of genuine goodness in THE TIGER IN THE SMOKE.

The idea of extra-legal justice, as practised most notably in MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, appeared occasionally in Sherlock Holmes and in Edgar Wallace’s THE FOUR JUST MEN, who admittedly commit murder, but only on those who deserve it. DEXTER is not plowing any new furrows in that respect.

Sayers actually quit detective fiction as she felt she had taken it as far as she could, and wondered if the genre had not guyed people into believing that life’s problems had neat, satisfying solutions. Her decision to thereafter explore religious and theological themes gave us some interesting plays and a translation of the Inferno, so may have been no bad thing. For a practising Anglo-Catholic, her detective stories are not especially imbued with Christian motifs, although they became progressively more so.

P.D. James is becoming progressively more inclined to a form of Augustinian despair, in which distinguishing right from wrong sometimes seems a matter of luck as much as anything. Nonetheless, she is a fine writer and Christian writer to boot; THE CHILDREN OF MEN is not a detective work but increasingly looks like prophecy.

On a limited acquaintance, I would agree that Cadfael is an anachronistic 20th-Century figure marooned in the 11th Century.

Peter Erb’s MURDER, MANNERS, MYSTERY is a good book on the subject.

By: Kathleen Miller

Kathleen Miller — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 02:18:57 +0000

Agatha Christie also wrote under the name Mary Westmacott. “Absent in the Spring” isn’t quite a mystery, but it is a superb exposition of the nature of salvation. It so totally avoids religious jargon that it can only be classified as a “Christian” book if you include a “stealth” sub-category.
Not easy to find a copy, but worth the effort.

By: Louise

Louise — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 22:46:03 +0000

P.D. James’ Original Sin answered a religious question that had bothered me for years. Speaking about her murdered sister, the Anglican religious Sister said to Dalgleish : “Confidences? How could there be confidences when we despised each others’ God?”

It helped me see why I could not sustain a friendship with a woman whom I loved but who was so liberal that no abortion, at any stage, could not be justified or excused, or even infanticide if it involved an anencephalic infant. We despised each other’s God, and were left without a foundation for friendship.

Does that qualify the book as “religious”?

By: Baceseras

Baceseras — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 20:40:57 +0000

Thomas Keneally’s early novel (possibly his first), _The Place at Whitton_, is a mystery is, if memory serves, set entirely in the remote home of a men’s religious order. I think Keneally has written only two mysteries; the second, and better in my view, _Victim of the Aurora_, takes place on a polar expedition.

I also want to mention J.C. Masterman’s _An Oxford Tragedy_, not a “religious” mystery per se, but one of the few mysteries I know to contain not a mere simulacrum but actual dread – the real thing, the religious emotion.

By: Bibbit

Bibbit — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 13:39:35 +0000

I agree with Ms. Thomas. Cadfael, it seems to me, is somehow supposed to be better than the Church. Smarter than the Church, not really in sync with the Church.

By: Wednesday Highlights | Pseudo-Polymath

Wednesday Highlights | Pseudo-Polymath — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 13:36:33 +0000

[...] Looking for mystery fiction. [...]

By: Sally Thomas

Sally Thomas — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 13:11:45 +0000

I read a lot of the Cadfael mysteries a long time ago and loved them, but recently I picked up one — The Heretic’s Apprentice was the title, maybe? — and was struck by what now seems to be a drearily predictable move to sympathize with the heretic, victimized by the bad old authoritarian humanity-hating Church. One of Cadfael’s “strengths of character” seems to be that he’s able to see past all that bad old authoritarianism to the “real human situation.” He’s the mild-mannered monk quietly working away in the herb garden, thinking his own thoughts — and it’s always his own thoughts, as distinct from anything actually religious, which win the day.

Or so I recall, anyway.

By: Margaret

Margaret — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 06:28:29 +0000

Like other people here, I thought of P.D. James’ books. Her detective, Adam Dalgleish, is the son of a rector and Dalgleish seems to respect the faith. In THE BLACK TOWER, Dalgleish has a good friend named Father Baddeley who is depicted as a kind and intelligent priest.

Agatha Christie’s “Mysterious Mr. Quin” stories have a heavy dose of the supernatural. I wonder who Mr. Quin is….

Both of Agatha Christie’s star detectives are practicing Christians. Hercule Poirot is a Catholic and Miss Marple is an Anglican. They both aver that they “disapprove of murder” and I’ve always thought they said it with “Thou shalt not kill” in mind. Familiarity with Catholic practices helps Poirot solve a murder in TAKEN AT THE FLOOD. Here is some dialog:

Hercule Poirot: Do you know that the priest, when he is buried, he is always facing his parishioners? Oui. Because when the Day of Judgment, it comes, and the dead, they all arise, he can greet them, and lead them through the Gates of Paradise. Tis a beautiful idea.
Rosaleen: He shan’t be leading me.
Hercule Poirot: You must not say that, ma chere. Despair is a sin.
Rosaleen: I’m cut off from the mercy of God.
Hercule Poirot: No. No one is cut off from the mercy of God… ever.