A review by ebbywoowoo
Murder Before Evensong by Richard Coles

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot

2.25

I spent far too much time trying to figure out when this story took place with its scant references to the period (mid 80’s I’m guessing, I still don’t know). I had to go back to check the beginning to be sure I didn’t gloss over a date somewhere after a reference to AIDS and one of the characters maybe being gay and a lack of cell phones. Until that point (over 1/3 of the way in) I was reading as if it were set in modern times. It was just too subtle a thing and hugely distracting. There were far too many villagers introduced at one time with a lot of effort going in to describe and develop them but they all just got blended together and I never really remembered who was supposed to be which character. All in all it was very much a this murder happened and suddenly in the fourth from last chapter by divine intuition it was solved and then explained to all in the end.