The Reaper [Hardcover]

Peter Lovesey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2001

A dark, delicious tale of a popular village cleric who has no conscience.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Wielding the Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement he recently won from the British Crime Writers, Lovesey slashes his way through the overgrown shrubbery of the rural British cozy. The result is an extremely clever, exquisitely written story of a murderous rector who manages to earn a great deal of our sympathy while dramatically whittling down his flock in the Wiltshire village of Foxford. "If you knew Marcus Glastonbury, you would not expect him to appreciate anything out of the ordinary," Lovesey tells us right away about the local bishop, who comes to chastise the handsome young rector for cooking the books at his last parish. And indeed Bishop Glastonbury is no match for the Reverend Otis Joy a wickedly intelligent serial killer (the bishop becomes his second victim, framed to look like a suicide and a sex pervert) who also happens to be a crackerjack priest. That's why the good folk of Foxford especially the women find it hard to swallow the gossip about Reverend Joy that gradually builds up like a winter ground fog. One local housewife, Rachel Jansen, who surprises the rector naked under an apron while he cleans up after killing the bishop, becomes such a strong supporter that she risks losing not only her life but also her immortal soul. Lovesey deftly plants deceptive clues and raises false hopes about Reverend Joy's fate, all the while painting a picture of a town and a church congregation so real that they leap off the page. (Apr. 1)Forecast: Soho is reprinting another one of Lovesey's best novels 1978's Rough Cider in paperback to help celebrate his Diamond Dagger, and he will be the guest of honor at this year's Bouchercon in Washington, D.C. Last year's well-received The Vault is also still available, helping to give this deserving author a lot of visibility.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Otis Joy, rector of Foxford, is a gifted preacher, an able parish politician, and a deft fund-raiser. So deft is he that he manages, with the help of carefully picked, somewhat dense parish treasurers, to embezzle funds from every post he holds. When the bishop confronts him with the evidence, Rector Joy dispatches him with a blow to the head from a St. Paul's Cathedral snow globe. The reader watches in horrified, sometimes admiring fascination, as the rector continues to wow them in the pews, soothe suspicions, seduce his next pick for treasurer, while pursuing, on days off and at odd moments when parishioners thwart his plans, his avocation as serial killer. Greatly acclaimed suspense master Lovesey (his latest accolade is the Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement) is brilliant at constructing a knife's-edge suspense plot and at involving us, against our will and better judgment, with the charming, evil rector. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 295 pages
• Publisher: Soho Press; 1st edition (April 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569472270
• ISBN-13: 978-1569472279
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,617,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

PETER LOVESEY is the author of the Peter Diamond mysteries, well known for their use of surprise, strong characters and hard-to-crack puzzles. He was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2000, the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, the Anthony, the Ellery Queen Readers' Award and is Grand Master of the Swedish Academy of Detection. He has been a full-time author since 1975, and was formerly in further education. Earlier series include the Sergeant Cribb mysteries seen on TV and the Bertie, Prince of Wales novels. The Diamond novels, set in Bath, England, where Peter lived for some years, feature a burly, warm-hearted, but no-nonsense police detective whose personal life becomes as engaging to the reader as the intricate mysteries he solves. His team in Bath CID includes the ex-journo Ingeborg Smith, the long-serving Keith Halliwell and the meticulous John Leaman, all involved in what is essentially a fair-play procedural mystery series. Peter and his wife Jax, who co-scripted the TV series, have a son, Phil, also a teacher and mystery writer, and a daughter Kathy, who was a Vice-President of J.P.Morgan-Chase, and now lives with her family in Greenwich, Ct. Peter currently lives in Chichester, England. His website at www.peterlovesey.com gives fuller details of his life and books. "Try him. You'll love him," wrote the doyen of the mystery world, Otto Penzler, in the New York Sun.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes the bad guy wins!!, March 26, 2001

By 

Susan Rose (Belleair, Florida USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Reaper (Hardcover)

Otis Joy is the popular and handsome young rector of St. Bartholomew's Church in Foxford, Wiltshire, England. His bishop has just accused him of embezzling church funds and ordered him to resign. The rector has no other choice other than the murder of the bishop and the cleverly designed disposal of the body to render a suicide verdict when it is discovered. If his parishioners would only keep to his plans, Joy would not have to resort to murder again. Unfortunately, they don't and he does. With a devilish plot, Lovesey encourages the reader to sympathize with the Rector Joy who only seeks an ordered life. Hilarious, wicked, and twisted, The Reaper is not to be missed! Peter Lovesey is the author of twenty-one celebrated mystery novels and the recipient of the 2000 CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in recognition of lifetime achievement.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great fun, September 28, 2001

By 

F. G. Hamer "MadManxMan" (Isle of Man) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Reaper (Hardcover)

The Reaper is a humourous, but elegantly written story of a homicidal rector who somehow secures the reader's approval while radically culling his flock in a Wiltshire village. His first (?) victim, Bishop Glastonbury, is found in a deserted quarry with a naughty girlie magazine close at hand. The Bishop's last telephone call was to a 'Miss Whiplash' hotline. Meanwhile, Otis Joy, the guilty rector, is disturbed by Rachel Jansen, a parishoner, as he parades around his home dressed only in an apron! Getting the picture?

This book is a great fun read as the bodies begin to pile up and the reader is the only one who knows who's doing it. There's no mystery involved - Otis Joy is guilty of more deaths than the bubonic plague. We even learn Reverend Joy's motives. What holds the reader's attention is the lasting question, will he be caught? People are getting suspicious, and tongues begin to wag. And, of course, there's Joy's possible relationship with Rachel Jansen after her husband suddenly 'dies'... Will it happen? Can it succeed?

My only reason for not giving 'The Reaper' a five star rating, is because I felt we weren't given quite enough characterization of the main roles. If there'd been a four-and-a-half button, I would have pressed it. Nevertheless, 'The Reaper' earned Peter Lovesey the Cartier Diamond Dagger award and should not be missed. His other books (over twenty of them) include 'Rough Cider' and 'The Vault' - also well worth space on your bookshelf.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Slight Trying of the Patience, November 12, 2001

By 

Matthew Gladney (Champaign-Urbana, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Reaper (Hardcover)

'The Reaper' is a very well-written book, not that long to read, and evokes its desired ambience of a quiet English village quite satisfactorily. The plot is well executed. It's the characters that did it in for me.

The book is not, in my estimation, a mystery, though that is where I found it at my local booksellers. There is murder and mischief aplenty, even some suspensful moments, but we know from the very outset whodunit. This puts it in the 'Columbo' league, where we know the identity of the killer, and the fun is supposed to be watching them squirm. While I enjoy that genre of suspense, it is not done as well as it could be in the case of 'The Reaper'.

The story concerns young and handsome Reverend Otis Joy, who has newly come to preside over St. Bartholomew's Church in Wiltshire , England. The first chapter shows him murdering Bishop Glastonbury, and the subsequent disposal of the body. There are certain mysterious elements regarding Joy's past which come up, but then they are discarded for a little too long before being picked-up later on in the novel. A young, unhappily married woman named Rachel Jansen attends Joy's congregation, and is in love with him (in her own convoluted way). Their relationship makes for the bulk of the story. I say "their relationship", whereas it is more Rachel's inner thoughts regarding the ever-murderous Reverend Joy.

And that is what bothered me the most about this book. There was no protagonist. No one to "root for". On one side we have Otis Joy, who murders people as though he were swatting flies, and then Rachel Jansen, who is overly-obsessed with the reverend to be of any sympathetic interest to the reader. She borders on being flaky, and I found it hard to readily embrace a book with a remorseless killer and an in-love flake as its protagonists. *This also, by the way, differs 'The Reaper' from being completely like a Columbo, as in Columbo, the star is the protagonist, the anchor to the ship, as it were. There really isn't such an anchor in this book.*

'The Reaper' does serve up a surprise or two (one very big one, as a matter of fact), and it is written well. I just wish that there had been a driving force of good somewhere in it - a Holmes, a Wimsey, a Poirot, a Marple, a Dalgliesh.... heck, even a Columbo.