In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming

This is the first book in a murder mystery series starring Chief of police Russ Van Alstyne and Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson (yes, she's a woman). The books are set in the small New York town of Millers Kill. The other two books that I've read from this series are A Fountain Filled With Blood and Out of the Deep I Cry. I'll review all three books briefly in this blog.

I'm not sure this book (and its fellows) belong on my "Out of the Best Books" blog, actually. The mysteries themselves are fairly interesting. But what keeps the reader engaged is the relationship between the deeply religious Clare and the very married Russ. By the end of the first book, these two are in love. Their relationship is unconsummated, it's true. But they are both unfaithful to their vows (hers to God and his to his wife) emotionally. It's basically an adulterous relationship--not qualified to be a "best book".

That bothers me quite a bit. What bothers me even more, however, is how subtly the reader is led to root for this adulterous relationship--we really want the two to be together. We never meet Russ' busy wife so we never come to like her. This makes it easy for us to wish her to be cast off in favor of Clare, who we do know and really like. I find this whole idea disturbing and it's taken me three books of this series to figure out how I'm feeling about Clare and Russ and therefore how I'm feeling about this series.

In book two, A Fountain Filled with Blood there are plenty of exciting parts--including a helicopter crash which draws Clare and Russ even closer to each other. The plot in this book is a little vague--there's a heavy-handed homosexual message that doesn't seem to fit in with the overall motives for murder that end up being (sort of) uncovered. There is bad language scattered throughout the book--not from every character on every page, but enough so that when I finished the book, one of things I remembered clearly about it was the occasional bad language.

In book three, Out of the Deep I Cry there are, again, plot twists which bring our characters closer to each other. There's a historical aspect to this book that is interesting. There is bad language scattered throughout.

It's so interesting to me how beautifully I have been drawn into this series. It is a compliment to the writing of Julia Spencer-Fleming that she's written books filled with relative morality, adultery, foul language and violent situations in a series where one of the main characters is actually an active priest and the other an upstanding chief of police! Very good writing indeed.

This is a well-written series with mysteries that are engaging enough, but with an adulterous subplot that is guaranteed to draw in the reader. Caveat emptor.