Book Review: Murder by the Minster by Helen Cox

When this book dropped into my hands, I looked forward to settling down to immerse myself in another murder mystery, this one set in the familiar surroundings of York. I was taken by the female sleuth who, despite the author’s frequent references to Agatha Christie, was nothing like Miss Marple. The trilby hat and self-imposed navy and white uniform of a librarian offered a little in the way of visualisation as well as characterisation. Indeed, throughout the book, characterisation was strong, if a little repetitive in places. The image of an elderly lady who claims to have psychic powers, dressed as a Christmas elf under a magenta raincoat, brought a smile to the lips although ‘Cabbage’ was a bit of a let-down and the grim Michelle was under used.

University librarian, Kitt Hartley, is shocked one morning at work to be informed by the police that her best friend has been arrested for murder. Despite providing an alibi, she is unable to convince the detectives they are wrong, so this keen reader of murder mysteries decides she will have to solve the case herself in order to bring the real perpetrator to justice and prove her friend’s innocence. Her actions stretch credulity a little but this is forgivable since the book is a work of fiction and not a manual of the legal system or approved police procedure. Kitt follows a path which leads her to, among other places, the obscure night club, Ashes to Ashes, (the name stolen from a well-known television series to reinforce the 80’s feel, perhaps), a theatre dressing room, a beauty parlour and a watery encounter in the Ouse – not necessarily in that order. She is arrested and released, suspended from her job and threatened with re-arrest before eventually solving the case with the help of her, sometimes ditzy, friends and colleagues.

The bottom line is, the story engaged me and I wanted to know ‘whodunnit’. I liked Kitt’s confident retorts and comments - ‘It was amazing how far a staff identity card and an authoritative posture can get you’, and she, like the rest, was a believable character. Emotional baggage is a fact of life for most people and this story relied on it.

To publicise it purely as a murder mystery, however, is, for me, a little misleading. There is a romantic element to this story and the lack of subtlety is disappointing. Detective Inspector Halloran enters the scene just after a humorous comment about Kitt’s favourite mug which says ‘Kiss the Librarian’ – the structural link could have been underplayed but it wasn’t! ‘He might even be dashing on occasion but he was no Edward Rochester’ is as close to the Mills and Boon denial of love at first sight as it gets. Cox does like her literary allusions, particularly to crime writers, as well as referencing several films throughout the novel which, I suppose, emphasise the interests of her principal character and actually provide the reader with an additional element to watch out for.

Throughout the novel, though, the ‘will-they, won’t-they’ scenario between Halloran and Kitt, so favoured by television writers - i’m thinking, here, of Lynley and Havers and Castle and Beckett to name just two - is repetitive and too explicit. A lingering glance, a brush of a hand would have been better than the too frequent descriptions of faster beating hearts, thoughts of skin on skin and that oh so soft beard! Certainly, less would have been more, especially given the supposed genre of the book.

The thread of DS Charlotte Banks fancying the clearly heterosexual Evie was never going anywhere and was an unnecessary diversion, unless I missed the point – unrequited love can hurt us all, maybe. I do note that, according to the blurb, DS Banks features more in Cox’s second book in this series A Body in the Bookshop (a discreet echo of Christie’s The Body in the Library?) so perhaps Cox was laying the ground for the rest of the series of ‘cozy mysteries’.

A good, well-written, holiday read, by an experienced writer; I am sure the series will be popular with many.


Murder by the Minster is published by Quercus