The Monk - Tim Sullivan ****

By Brian Clegg

It’s always satisfying to come across a well-written murder mystery and discover there are several more waiting. In this case I accidentally started with book 5, but have since gone back to the first of Tim Sullivan’s novels featuring DS Cross.

The most interesting feature of the series is that Cross is on the autism spectrum. This gives him some distinctive advantages over his colleagues, while also offering some challenges. On the whole Sullivan handles this well – in this book, almost all of Cross’s colleagues regard him with affection, though we are told that in the past he was treated badly. That is perhaps the most unlikely aspect – it’s hard to imagine that policing has so many suitably thoughtful officers, though I may be resorting too much to stereotype.

The murder victim is a Catholic monk, with much of the action taking place in an abbey – also well handled and providing a neat tie-in to Cross’s enthusiasm for church organs.  The monk’s background is unusual, giving opportunity for a suitably twisty plot. One oddity here is that, given the relatively low numbers of Catholics in the UK, a surprising number of the characters in the novel seem to be Catholic or to have ties to that church (not just those involved with the abbey).

Something else relatively unusual is the way that Cross undertakes interviews later in the book, though the approach only really works because he already knows quite a lot about what actually happened, and so can lead the suspects through a web of lies – unlikely though this is, it’s very satisfying. Sullivan brings the key interview with the suspect centre stage, dedicating around the last quarter of the book to this, with the exception of a twist that comes after it. Having since read several other Sullivan books, this is a standard feature of the series.

This isn’t the sort of murder mystery that makes you go ‘Wow!’, but it is very enjoyable and engaging if cosy mysteries are your thing. Occasionally the writing is a touch lazy, and perhaps too much is made of Cross’s colleagues reactions to his autism, but overall I’ll definitely be reading more. One tiny moan, perhaps indicating that laziness, concerns the line ‘the odometer never went over seven miles an hour’ – well no, it wouldn’t, would it, considering what an odometer measures.

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.