The Religious Body: Complete & Unabridged (G K Hall Audio Books Series) [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Robin Bailey is laconic. I generally prefer quicker--or perhaps I should say, lighter--readers (Ian Carmichael, Rosemary Leach) but there is something hypnotically pleasant about listening to Robin Bailey's deep voice. You can picture him raising his eyebrows over some of Sloan's dialog.

In typical Aird fashion, the dialog is often quite cryptic and the mystery is somewhat thin. If you like mysteries for the clues, the red herrings, the complex puzzle building, Aird is not for you. If, however, you enjoy irony and the fine sketches of various personalities (in the context, of course, of a murder), Aird is a good choice.

Recommendation: I'm a firm believer that readers make all the difference in the enjoyment of an audiotape. If you've never heard Robin Bailey before, check one of his audios out of the library first.

As is usual in Sloan's cases, THE RELIGIOUS BODY begins not with any member of the police team, but on what at first looks to be a typical day in the lives of those who are about to discover the first body - in this case, with Sister Mary St. Gertrude, who this month is Caller for the Convent of St. Anselm. Sister Gertrude begins her official day by waking the Reverend Mother, then working her way through the rest of the sisters in their prescribed order, making no especial note of the day or season apart from hoping that the weather will be fine this Bonfire Night so that the fireworks won't be going off at odd hours, and vaguely remembering last year's hijinks by the students of the neighbouring agricultural college. Everything seems more or less routine, even discovering that Sister Anne isn't in her cell (Sister Anne's test of true Christian charity being that she sleeps next door to the convent's champion snorer).

But when Sister Anne is absent from breakfast, and nervous little Sister Peter the chantress finds that she's got blood on her hands from brushing against something she doesn't remember, that's another matter - and when Sister Anne is found at the bottom of the cellar steps with a broken skull, Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby are called in.

As is often the case with Aird's books, the police pathologist, Doctor Dabbe, is very much a personality quite apart from having a key role to play (Aird's own father was a doctor, incidentally); Sister Anne not only didn't die from a fall, but couldn't have been alive much past supper the previous evening - despite testimony from other sisters that she'd attended Compline afterward. One of the sub-plots of the case is the hunt for the murder weapon - my compliments to you if you identify it before the police do.

The reader for the unabridged audio edition of this book (and for most of Aird's older works), Robin Bailey, is particularly good. He has a very mellow voice when not in a specific character, but can modulate it to be very rough indeed when needed for characters such as the convent's disreputable handyman Hobit, or into the brisk businesslike manner of Sister Anne's cousin Howard Cartwright - who was faced with some very tricky handling of the family business if she were to refuse to come to an arrangement with him about her stake in the family firm. Sister Anne, if she had outlived her estranged mother, would've been a wealthy woman to the dismay of her other relatives (having a half-share in a munitions firm and strong feelings about owing reparation to the victims of war tending to make those actively concerned in the business nervous about her), but it's unclear which of the sisters might've known the details - particularly that the convent stood to benefit financially from her death *only* if she outlived various other relatives.

Not least of the troubles in investigating the case is that the Convent of St. Anselm is rather traditional - full habit making it hard to tell the sisters apart by sight, names in religion being distinct from secular names, grand silence generally discouraging conversation, and practicing custody of the eyes (the very opposite of what the police could use in a witness). The sisters make a point of trying to submerge their individual personalities and pasts, as well as not permitting likes and dislikes between sisters - so it's hard to say who might've had a motive, or *known* they had a motive, or would admit to being observant enough to notice any other evidence.

And just to make matters interesting, the convent's next-door neighbours - the young gentlemen of the Institute - are about as marked a contrast as possible, being predominantly young men with a tradition of playing practical jokes on Guy Fawkes Night. Unfortunately, this year their prank involved stealing a spare habit from the convent to dress up the guy for the Institute bonfire - so it's clear that at least one person from the outside could have broken into the convent on the night of the murder.

Drive-in totals:

- Two murders, one attempted murder.

- One attempted burning in effigy (the inspector has to rescue the guy as evidence before it burns up).

- An interesting range of backgrounds of the various sisters, from Reverend Mother's humble origins to the title and castle in the background of the infirmarian. The convent itself has some backstory, having once been a very large private house belonging to an old local family (the last of whom is engaged to the director of the Institute, so she comes in for her share of gentle interrogation about the place while her intended unearths the pranksters who broke in on the night of the murder).

You would think a 1966 novel on murder committed at a Roman Catholic convent in the English countryside would be dated. Not so! You'll find the mystery of the murder of Sister Anne to be cleverly plotted -- as is the novel. You'll grow to love Detective Inspector Sloan, despite his impatience and gruff exterior, and sympathize with the dim-witted but long-suffering Sergeant Crosby.

I never guessed who the murderer was. I also loved the detail of life in a pre-Vatican II convent, which was much less austere than I would have expected. I highly recommend The Religious Body, and I promise you won't be able to wait to the read the other books in this series from the prolific Catherine Aird.