Forgotten Book - Redemption

 

Redemption was the second book in Jill McGown's Lloyd and Hill series, her fifth novel in all. It was first published in 1988 and it has in recent times enjoyed a new life as a Christmas mystery and retitled Murder at the Old Vicarage. There is perhaps an element of dumbing-down in the alternative title compared to the original, but I suppose that if it helps to draw the book to attention of more readers, that's not a bad thing.

Because it is a really good book in the traditional vein. The early chapters in particular made me think of the writing of Ann Cleeves; there are definite similarities. Jill was perhaps slightly less concerned with landscape and setting and slightly more concerned with plot than Ann, but they are both very good at characterisation and creating engaging police detectives.

A striking feature of this traditional mystery is that the pool of suspects is small and there isn't a sub-plot (in the sense that there's a single puzzle to be solved - one can argue that the tangles of the emotional relationships are in lieu of that kind of sub-plot). At first we see things from the point of view of the vicar, Graham, whose daughter Joanna has a husband who has hit her more than once. Graham's wife Marian is a doting mother and perhaps the strongest member of the family. And then there is Eleanor, a young and very attractive widow, to whom Graham is increasingly attracted. A violent murder is committed early on, and suspicion and viewpoints shift regularly.

I think it's fascinating that the spark for the story came from a joke that Jill McGown was told, and which features towards the end of the book, prompting a lightbulb moment on the part of Judy Hill. One of the interesting features of the story is that the most emotionally compelling writing concerns two affairs - one of them between Lloyd and Hill. In each case, it's clear that the author's sympathies seem to be with the marriage-breaker and that she favours putting an end to a marriage that has gone stale. This approach contributes to the moral complexity and ambiguity of a novel that I found very readable - a first-rate example of Jill McGown's craft.