By: Mark Schweizer
Year: 2009
Genre: Mystery

Find this book at Amazon.com

I love a good, silly book and this is a good, silly book.

The story follows Hayden Konig, the chief of police and the music director/organized at the local Episcopal church in a small town called St. Germaine, North Carolina. This is the seventh book in Schweizer’s “Liturgical Mystery” series. Each book, which is easily read on it’s own, has the author just tossing in side stories as they come to mind. Schweizer does this is such a fun way, that it doesn’t seem like things are just being added for humor.

In “Diva,” it’s early summer and residents are awaiting the grand opening of the newly built Episcopal church (which burned to the ground in the last book). When breaking ground, a box was found which residents assume is a time capsule and are going to open after worship on the first Sunday in the new building (it doesn’t contain what they expect it to). There is also a new “Christian Formation” director who had decided to have a Bible school with other congregations in town, a “new” Henry Purcell piece called “Elisha and the Bears” and a building that burns down when lightening (from God?) strikes it down during a protest. All of these events lead to plenty of motive for the murder of one of the town’s residents.

I found these books in the depth of the seminary bookstore (the one section that is fiction). They are so much fun, especially if you work in a church. The writing is crisp and light-hearted. The characters are quirky and the situations unrealistic. I lived in a small town, it was not this charming or irreverent. This is obviously an idealized view of the perfect small town. Enough tourist business to maintain the businesses but not so much that the town is world-weary. Everything is… perfect. Of course it’s not real life. It’s fiction and Schweizer has a lot of fun in this fictional world. I especially like the running gag through the series about finding someone to take on the children’s ministry (my future line of work). The church has bad luck finding ministry staff (both pastoral and educational). But the results are oh-so-funny.

One complaint I’ve had about the series is the editing. It seems like a small publishing house with editing not as sharp as it should be (but getting better as the series moves on). I understand extra words (changing a sentence mid-thought and forgetting to fix it) and bad punctuation getting through, but as a graphic designer, I know the very last step should be a final spell check and the error I found in this book would have been flagged by a spellcheck. That is something that I am willing to overlook, though, because these books are so much fun.

Oh, and I forgot the best part. The main character owns a typewriter and hat used by Raymond Chandler. He is sure those two items will help him write the perfect hard-boiled detective novel. Through “Diva” (and the other books) we are given his attempts at writing. They are fabulous in their badness!

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars