davidclensy.com

Writer, broadcaster and Anglican priest, the Rev. Richard Coles has certainly had a varied career – stretching back to his synth pop days alongside Jimmy Somerville in The Communards. But after penning an acclaimed series of non-fiction books and memoirs, he turned his attention fiction – releasing his debut mystery novel in 2022.

Speaking at Christ Church, Bath, on June 12 he gave readers a glimpse of the future direction for the series. The event, marked the launch of A Death In The Parish – the sequel to his best-selling Murder Before Evensong, which casts a parish priest in the role of “cosy-crime” detective after a death in an English village.

“I started wanting to create an imaginary world and people it with imaginary characters, really to continue thinking about the things that I was interested in, but also to revisit the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, with the sort of freedom that comes with fiction,” he said. “At first, I felt like a lion tamer without a whip. But I got to learn how to write a novel and really enjoyed it, so carried on.”

Coles revealed he is now working on the next instalment of the Canon Clement Mysteries, and already has a key idea for the following novel – it will be set in a monastery. Coles himself lived in a monastery for two years.

“I went into it rather naively thinking I would be living in this community of the blessed and holy, and that we would float around in this sort of gracious haze,” he said. “Actually you’re with the same people all the time, and that is very tough. A friend of mine there said it would be interesting to set a murder mystery in a monastery. When I asked why, he said: ‘there would be 40 suspects’.

A Death in the Parish, by Rev Richard Coles, is out now. His Borderline National Trinket tour, takes place later this year.