Skip to main content

Death in Holy Orders



Book Review

Title: Death in Holy Orders

Author: P D James

Publisher: Alfred A Knopf, New York, 2001

Pages: 415

St Anselm’s is an immense Victorian mansion on “one of the bleakest parts of the East Coast of England.”* It is a theological college of the Church of England with four priest-teachers and 20 ordinands. One fine morning, the dead body of one of the young ordinands is washed ashore. It is assumed to be an accident until an anonymous letter reaches Sir Alred Treeves, adoptive father of the ordinand and a flamboyant businessman. The letter implies the possibility of a murder. None less than Commander Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard is commissioned to find out the truth. Dalgliesh’s arrival at the ecclesiastical college is followed by three deaths one of which is a violent murder, another appears natural death, and the third seems to be an accident. The novel probes all these four deaths in a complex and gripping narrative.

What lends charm to the novel, in addition to the riveting plot, is the cast of characters. St Anselm’s has an unsavoury history in the first place with a homosexual scandal in 1923 and a mass conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1932. The present story is taking place in 2001 and the four priests teaching at the college have their own intriguing histories too. Father John, for instance, was imprisoned once for alleged sexual offences against two boys. Father Martin is a survivor of a Japanese prison camp who now, in his old age, is tormented by nightmares about those old, painful experiences. Father Sebastian, the Warden (the Chief, in layman’s terms) of St Anslem’s, has a sense of indebtedness to Inspector Yarwood who is now in the college for a brief period of recuperation. This same Yarwood happens to be the police officer who investigated a case against Archdeacon Crampton who is keen on getting St Anslem’s closed because of its elitism which over-valued “intelligence and intellectual achievement so that theology became a philosophical exercise in justifying scepticism.” According to the Archdeacon, institutions like St Anslem’s converted the Church into “a social organization within which the comfortable middle class could satisfy it craving for beauty, order, nostalgia and the illusion of spirituality.”

No sooner does the Archdeacon express his views against the college eloquently in a homily than he gets killed violently in the church of the college which is usually under lock and key because it houses some very precious paintings. Inspector Yarwood who investigated the death of the Archdeacon’s first wife and hence has been hated by the Archdeacon goes missing soon after this murder. But he will be discovered later as an ill person who could not commit any violent crime. So who killed the Archdeacon?

Are the other two deaths in the college natural? The author of this novel shrewdly tells us clearly in the beginning itself that Margaret Munroe’s death (an old woman and a former nurse who now works in the college as a Matron and housekeeper) is a murder perpetrated by a person who was close enough to her. “Oh, it’s you,” are her last words. Since she was a heart patient, everyone in the college assumes that hers was a natural death. But the reader knows that it isn’t.

Father John’s sister, who has been living with him in the college for quite some time, falls down from a stairway and dies. Is it a natural death, however, though she is a very old woman who could not climb those steep steps easily? Anyway, what was she doing on these steps leading to the wine cellar in the middle of the night?

She used to pilfer wine once in a while. The priests knew it and ignored it. Moreover, they helped her by adding a secure banister rail to the steep steps and also added sufficient light in the area so that she would not miss her way at all. We come across some very charming human motives and relationships in this novel. But the question is: Is the death of that old woman natural? The answer will come at the end of the novel as quite a surprise to the reader.

There are many surprises that this novel offers to the discerning reader. Many things to ponder about too. Let me end this review with a quote:

If life is hard and short and full of pain, you need the hope of heaven; if there is no effective law, you need the deterrent of hell. The Church gave them comfort and light and pictures and stories and the hope of everlasting life. The twenty-first century has other compensations. Football, for one. There you have ritual, colour, drama, the sense of belonging; football has its high priests, even its martyrs.”

P D James [1920-2014] wrote this novel when she was 80 years old. One should salute the complexity of her brain that created a novel like this at that age.

* All quotes are from the novel.


Top post on Blogchatter

Comments

  1. Hari OM
    PDJ is one of my all-time favourite authors and the Dalgliesh books were on my shelves for a long time (I had to 'rationalise' prior to moving continents). Definitely worth the reading! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was silly of me to have forgotten Dalgliesh while reviewing this book.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...

The Ramayana Chronicles: 26 Stories, Endless Wisdom

I’m participating in the A2Z challenge of Blogchatter this year too. I have been regular with this every April for the last few years. It’s been sheer fun for me as well as a tremendous learning experience. I wrote mostly on books and literature in the past. This year, I wish to dwell on India’s great epic Ramayana for various reasons the prominent of which is the new palatial residence in Ayodhya that our Prime Minister has benignly constructed for a supposedly homeless god. “Our Ram Lalla will no longer reside in a tent,” intoned Modi with his characteristic histrionics. This new residence for Lord Rama has become the largest pilgrimage centre in India, drawing about 100,000 devotees every day. Not even the Taj Mahal, a world wonder, gets so many footfalls. Ayodhya is not what it ever was. Earlier it was a humble temple town that belonged to all. Several temples belonging to different castes made all devotees feel at home. There was a sense of belonging, and a sense of simplici...