Who Killed the Curate? (1944) by Joan Coggin

Joan Coggin was a British writer of light, comedic mysteries and half a dozen of girls' school novels, published under the pseudonym "Joanna Lloyd," but she's best remembered for her four mysteries starring Lady Lupin Hastings (née Lorrimer) – a former socialite who became a vicar's wife. The late Tom and Enid Schantz, of Rue Morgue Press, reprinted the series in the early 2000s and the big reason why this once obscure, short-lived series is remembered today. Following the Rue Morgue Press reprints, Coggin and Lady Lupin "featured as favorite reading of characters" in the works of Katherine Hall Page (The Body in the Lighthouse, 2003) and Carolyn Hart (Murder Walks the Plank, 2004).

When I discovered the Rue Morgue Press, I was more interested in their reprints of Glyn Carr, Clyde B. Clason, Stuart Palmer and Kelley Roos. So, for one reason or another, I put Coggin together with their reprints of Catherine Aird, Manning Coles and the Littles aside as not of immediate interest. I missed out on Coggin's first return to print, but, twenty years after the Rue Morgue Press republished the final Lady Lupin mystery, the series got picked up by Galileo Publishing.

Last year, Galileo reprinted the first title in the series, Who Killed the Curate? (1944), which is subtitled "A Christmas Mystery" and introduces Lady Lupin Lorrimer as a London socialite dreading that evening's twenty-first birthday party of a friend – because at dinner she's going to sit next to a clergyman ("whatever did one talk about to clergymen?"). She agrees with her boyfriend/fiance to push off early to the Crimson Canary, but when she meets the clergyman, Andrew Hastings, she falls in love. Before anyone knows it, they're married and Lady Lupin is off to the small seaside town of Glanville to start anew as the vicar's wife.

A note of warning here for readers who prefer their detective stories to get on with it, because Who Killed the Curate? is going to severely test your patience.

It's not unusual for mystery writers to indulge their literary craving by taking their time to get to the murder in order to introduce the characters, flesh out their personalities and setting the stage for the crime. Ngaio Marsh made that approach her own as many of her detective novels can be read as a pair of interconnected novellas with the first-half building up the murder and the investigation covering the second-half. But usually that first-half still has a hint of what's coming. I can't remember ever having read a mystery novel in which the first-half reads nothing like it's supposed to setup a whodunit. The first-half of Who Killed the Curate? basically reads like a comedic novel of manners with the entirely clueless, scatterbrained Lady Lupin trying to grapple with her new duties as the vicar's wife, "what with the Guides and the Mothers' Union and the Sunday School." Or a woman coming to her to confess she has been seduced and is expecting a baby ("...whatever else the life of a clergyman's wife is, it isn't dull").

So you have to wait until the second-half, roughly speaking, for ten pounds of the Hastings' household money to go missing shortly followed by the fatal poisoning of Andrew's curate, Charles Young, but was murder, suicide or something else ("well, if it was the fish, we'll probably all go"). The police eventually find their likely-unlikely suspect and Lady Lupin "longed for a chance to show her friendship" is maneuvered by circumstances and position as the vicar's wife, who receives privileged information into the role of amateur sleuth – assisted by her London friends who arrived to celebrate Christmas. But even then, it feels like the detective story had to be drawn from this character novel of manners like blood from a stone. For example, the details of the murder itself are gradually revealed through out the second-half right up to the final quarter of the story. Coggin was a funny writer with an eye for character and dialogue, but it began to wear thin to the point where I stopped caring who killed the damn curate. Good thing, too, as the answer to the question is nothing special or particular memorable. Only thing the story managed to do making me wonder what sulphur cake tastes like.

I don't know if the problem is Coggin using this first novel to flesh out her cast of regular characters and their relationships or that this series just isn't for me. Either way, I'm very sorry to have to end this year's run of Christmas mystery reviews, and the year in general, on a downer. However, the first review of January is going to be banger! Happy New Year and hope to see you all back in 2025!