Customer Reviews

The Gardens of the Dead (Father Anselm Mysteries)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

To be perfectly honest, reading this novel was a trial. I haven't read the author's first book "The Sixth Lamentation", but from somewhere around chapter six, I was lamenting the fact that I'd started reading it at all. The best word to describe it is "dreary".

None of the characters come to life, or HAVE lives for that matter, and none are even remotely likeable. The story goes on and on in circles, covering and recovering the same scenarios over and over again.

There's the barrister (Anselm) who chucked the bench for a monastery, and who finds himself in the middle of a mission to correct the wrongs of a trial that took place years before. The chain of events is started by his former colleague, Elizabeth Glendinning, who takes great pains to lay out a tortuous scheme related to a closed case just before she dies by natural and foreseen causes.

Said scheme includes her son, with whom she hasn't seen eye to eye for a while, and a motley collection of characters related to the case. Back and forth we go, between a long suffering lawyer, a homeless man with a dark past, a young man with a darker past, and an assortment of female characters of various ages that become difficult to keep track of as the story progresses. The one character that could have saved this is the elusive "Pieman", who unfortunately is never allowed to play a significant role in the slowly unfolding drama.

Devoted fans of literature may use words such as "allegorical", "moral", "spiritual" and intellectual" to describe this one, but in my personal and considered opinion, I'd say "convoluted", "slow" and "not-the-kind-of-novel-to-read-if-you're-looking-for-a-good-tight-mystery"

Leave this one to fans of serious literary works, and people who like to ponder.

Amanda Richards, February 20, 2008

This story is intricately crafted, and skillfully told. The intellectual and spiritual themes that run through the story transend the typical mystery novel genre. Brodrick's heavy use of metaphor and simile creates poetic prose (I love this; it may not be to everyone's taste). The story unfolds through several different characters--each a strand of different colored thread--so at first it seems impossible that all of the characters and events will come together to provide a cohesive conclusion. At the end, the full tapestry comes into view, and the beauty of the complete work becomes apparent. Days after having finished the book, I still find myself reflecting back on it.

William Brodrick follows his brilliant debut novel, The 6th Lamentation, with another Father Anselm mystery, Gardens of the Dead. Before her untimely death, a former colleague of Anselm's, Elizabeth Glendinning, QC, reopened a case on which they both had worked a decade before. Glendinning left some rather cryptic instructions, along with a key, asking Anselm to complete her work. The case involved that of one Graham Riley, a shady wheeler-dealer who had been accused of pimping but was released due to lack of compelling evidence. Why Elizabeth chose to saddle Anselm with a blind investigation, rather than simply leave an account of what she had now turned up is a perplexing question, but on that fulcrum the plot revolves. What follows is a mystery that is equally perplexing, with several memorable characters who are both more and less than what they seem. The most interesting of these is Riley's wife, Nancy, who has more heart and humanity than virtually anyone else in the book except Anselm. That is not to say that she is unflawed, nothing of the sort. But as a writer, Brodrick is outstanding in his ability to populate his complex plots with fully realized, genuine characters with all-too-human virtues and faults. While Gardens lacks the intensity of Lamentation, it has a moral and spiritual dimensions all its own.

This literary mystery is really an old-fashioned morality tale, modern in its shuttle-weave structure, but universal in its theme of good and evil, forgiveness and hope. The writing is gorgeous, poetic and rich. Yes, the double flashbacks were a bit distracting, but the prose more than made up for it. Reminded me a bit of Iris Murdoch, in theme. I admire Brodrick's reach which, if it occasionally exceeds his grasp, is nonetheless worth the time spent. A great read.

The Gardens of the Dead is an oddity among murder mysteries: it is more poetry than prose. It's stream-of-conscious style and beautiful descriptive narration are a treat to anyone who really enjoys language. It lacks only economy to qualify as true poetry.

Most of you who have read the classical authors in the genre will recognize a similarity to Simenon's more psychological works, the non-Maigrets. Here as there the murderer is known, and it is through the details and the connections that the story surprises and entertains.

The characters are well formed and enjoyable. The "culprit" is dealt with sympathetically and even secondary characters are complete and well rounded, with a past, present and future that are believable.

A truly beautifully written work, almost wasted on a murder mystery.

There are wonderful characters here and a plot that winds elegantly from long-past to near-past to present to mid-past. There is the tension that builds as we are sure that something awful is going to happen when we aren't quite ready for it, and word-play that slides quiet puns - sole, soul - by us as smoothly as the river slips by Anselm's monastery.

But, best of all, there are ideas.

"We can't be luke-warm," Elizabeth says on page 8 (UK paper ed.) And that theme winds through the novel, as people are indifferent and passionate and, of course, luke-warm. We hear the phrase again and again in different words from different lips and then, on page 187, when a homeless man quotes Dante - "they lived with no praise and no blame" - we hear it with no sense of surprise, we recognize it without the need for attribution, prepared by the details of the man who speaks only in a vestibule.

This is a lovely book. Not a frantic beach read and not a conventional thriller, but all the better for that. Brodrick is subtle but not pretentious as he quietly gives us the lives of these people, so many of them in extremis, all presented without exclamation points or scare-quotes or italics that fill in gaps in an author's vocabulary. Yes, there are a few infelicities, as other reviews point out, but there is much more to please the mind's ear.

Elizabeth's will survives her death and impels Anselm and George and her son to move beyond the places in their lives where they have stopped, whether through grace or madness or that dazed inertial of the 20-something over-achiever.

The ending is harsh, in some respects, full of shocks to the system and, perhaps, somewhat jumbled. But the complex characters hold up very well as the changes are rung, even if the plot unravels a bit.

This is a book of messages, written and spoken. If you have a long, slow summer's day to spend under a shade tree, take this book along and you will be content.

I really enjoyed this book. I esp. like that Broderick is able to look at the nature of guilt and forgiveness from a spiritual, not just a legal, point of view.

I very nearly threw this book in the heap half way through. This is not "crime fiction" as we know it. And the "crime" is strangely obscure and not the centre of the plot. I was losing patience and couldn't understand what the point was; yet I'd already gone halfway. However, the next day I came back, enticed by the exquisite and poetic language and oddly troubled to leave this puzzling book and its characters hanging unfinished. As I reached the end, slowly and quietly everything becomes clear. The reward is something very beautiful, I think, and very touching.

I look forward to reading more by this author, however, I really think "mystery fiction" is not the correct label and will only lead to some readers being very frustrated.

I struggled to get interested in this book but finally gave up after 38 pages. I did not read the first Father Anselm book and maybe that would have helped carry over some interest in the characters. Maybe not. As a first time Broderick's reader, I find his writing style incredibly boring. What details or descriptive writing there was seemed only an effort to lengthen the book and not necessarily to be evocative of any mood or conjure vivid images in my imagination. I did not make it far enough to really comment on the craft of the mystery story itself. Perhaps a true mystery lover would have the patience to get through to the meat of the tale. Time to go back to Poe, Conrad, Hawthorne, King, or Chabon.

I was disappointed because I so enjoyed his first. This one felt too neat, too pat, and too coincidental. It would have been a lot simpler if it hadn't been all drawn out like this. And the moral dilemmas? They would have existed if all these characters weren't lying to themselves and each other. More tedious and frustrating because this is a good author and I expected more out of him. Neat idea but didn't work out well in execution.