Faculty of Murder: Mother Paul Investigates by June WrightMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I was really hoping to love this. Supposedly June Wright's "Mother Paul" was the first nun sleuth (it's a thing), and as that's a sub-genre I really enjoy, I was excited by the prospect of reading this pioneering story.
Sadly, almost every character in this book is wholly unlikeable, including Mother Paul. I'm willing to lay some blame at the feet of my own modern twenty-first century sensibilities, as opposed to those of 1960, but my quibbles would likely be the same, even if I had read it when first published. The young women at the University of Melbourne leave much to be desired, as the vast majority are whiny, fickle, mean, and/or duplicitous. Mother Paul herself is sketchy and manipulative, and seems to operate very much in the background. Miss Marple or Sister Fidelma she is not. Instead the protagonist (maybe) seems to be Elizabeth, who is perhaps the most typecast as the easily-shocked, 1960's version of a feminist who uses her wiles to make her nondescript fiancé jealous when he strings her along for too many years.
The big reveal was a bit of a let down, only because I cared so little for any of the characters that it came as a relief just to be done with it. Detective Savage is potentially the only truly likeable character, and he too must tolerate the whims of the Mother Superior.
Lucy Sussex's introduction is a worthwhile read, and contextualizes Wright's choice of a nun as her star sleuth in an important light. It is also important to note that Wright's life took a different path and she did not continue writing as many Mother Paul mysteries as she would have liked. That is a pity, because one gets the sense that Mother Paul might have developed and grown to be more than a conniving interloper.
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