Customer Reviews

Mortal Sickness (Lydmouth Mysteries)

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Jill Francis, 6 months after her relocation from London, is starting to adapt to village life, but the village has yet to adapt to her. Perhaps her new job, reporting for the local paper, will help. As she is researching the medieval chalice owned by the local church, she stumbles across a murder. Jill and fellow newcomer, Inspector Thornhill, are once again obliged to cross paths, a circumstance with neither relishes, in spite of a strange attraction that lurks in the awareness of each. In this second installment of the Lydmouth Series, readers meet several new characters, most notably Alec Sutton, the new vicar, and his wife Mary, who writes detective novels under a pseudonym for fear of what people might say. The Mortal Sickness lacks the edginess necessary for real suspense, but it's more than a mere crime novel. The interaction among the inhabitants of this small, post WWII community, along with their motivations, secrets, hopes, and failures, takes center stage this time around.

First Sentence: Jill knew at once that the woman was dead.

English villages are not always peaceful. The vicar and his wife are relatively new to Lydmouth yet someone is doing their best to force them out by sending anonymous letters claiming the vicar has been having an affair with one of his parishioners. When the parishioner is found dead within the church, initial suspicion falls on the vicar.

Journalist Jill Francis is also fairly to Lydmouth. Her professional interest soon becomes personal after also being attacked.

Mr. Taylor's works reminded me of Agatha Christie only in Miss Marple's observation that the residents of St. Mary's Mead were a microcosm of people everywhere. There were quite a few characters and, although the author was kind enough to provide a list of characters, I found I didn't really need it as each came to life for me.

Being set in post-War 1950s, it depicted the, outwardly at least, the secondary role of women. Yet the strongest characters were the women, particularly Jill and the vicar's wife, Mary Sutton. There was a very strong sense of place and evocative descriptions which enabled me to stroll through this fictional village with the characters.

Taylor has a wonderful turn of phrase. I found myself stopping and re-reading occasional sentences for the pleasure of them. The plot was deceptive. It was fairly easy to spot a villain early on, but with a couple good twists along the way, I realized how well plotted was the story.

Such was my enjoyment; I've ordered two more books in this series.

This is the second book in Taylor's Lydmouth "village mysteries" following An Air that Kills. It includes the two continuing characters, Inspector Thornhill & Jill Francis--and a Youlgreave as well (they are part of Taylor's Roth trilogy). I did like it better than the first village mystery book, but it's rather slow-moving and depressing IMHO. His writing is quite good, however, and he has penetrating, though rather cynical, insight into humanity--"Williamson's often-voiced disapproval of unsupported theories did not apply to his own." There are considerable surprises and some sexual tension in the book--some "justice" of a sort as well. Also some amusing and clever turns of phrase such as: "Mrs. Abberley had the emotional fragility of a Tiger tank." Taylor's books are quite unlike either Agatha Christie or Conan Doyle's--less emphasis on clues and whodunit--though there are some effort in that regard. His philosophy is quite different: "Life wasn't like a detective novel where you could safely assume that one of a dozen characters listed for easy reference at the front would prove to be the murderer. People were messy, and so were their lives; half the time they didn't know the reasons for their actions and half the time they were quite capable of acting out of character; throw in the enormous role of chance and you were left with the situation in which the principles of rational deduction had only a very limited application." Thus, there is considerable truth in the book and some astute observations--but very few likable characters. It's not in a class with his fine An Unpardonable Crime and Caroline Minuscule.