A Book with Snow on the Cover

Happily my copy of The Murder at the Old Vicarage by Jill McGown is the paperback edition from Pan Books in 2015. And it has snow on the cover! Although set at Christmas, that’s pretty incidental to the book, although according to the back cover it’s ‘Jill McGown’s classic homage to Agatha Christie’. Not being a Christie reader I’m in no position to judge.

What I can tell you is that this is the second book in the Lloyd and Hill police procedural series. I could happily include all or any of the books in a round-up of my reading. I can’t remember how I came across them, but I have read them all multiple times, and enjoy living in Lloyd and Judy’s world. These are proper police procedurals with structure and order and evidence gathering – unlike some of the modern so-called cosy crime series. Alongside the cases that the team investigate, the series also follows Judy and Lloyd’s complicated relationship – but never at the expense of the police investigation. The books are peopled by recurring secondary characters who also develop as individuals and who complement and genuinely assist the main characters. Foremost amongst these is Freddie, the pathologist, who does a great line in black humour – and winding up Acting DCI Lloyd and occasionally Sergeant Hill. (Ranks correct for this book.)

Called out on Christmas Eve to a murder in a village vicarage, Lloyd is hopeful that it will prove to be a simple (in investigative terms) domestic crime that will be done and dusted by Christmas Day. Instead he is faced with puzzles, conflicting evidence and people with things, that may or may not be relevant, to hide. Each discovery seems to make the case more confusing, and everything is made worse by the weather.

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