I can seeing a publishing trend which I think will interest my readers – the organist-adjacent thriller. The latest contribution to this genre is Peter Kingston’s Murder in the Minster, which was a fine distraction this summer when the weather on our Dordogne holiday took a downturn.
A cathedral makes an appealing setting for a thriller: so why not pull the cathedral organist in the murder and mayhem, calling on all the composure and problem-solving skills possessed by a church musician?
A cathedral’s community of richly multifarious characters forms a further useful backdrop. Peter told me: ‘My musical life began at Westminster Cathedral. I was a council estate kid. My mother spotted an ad for chorister voice trials in the Universe and took me up to London on the appointed day. The only song I knew to sing to Colin Mawby, the then Director of Music, was Baa baa black sheep. Somehow it won me the one all-expenses scholarship. I had four magical years in the choir and ended up as head chorister.’
So Peter can fill out the cast of his book with individuals we are all familar with: the pushy choir mums, noxious little choristers, and interfering clergy.
After reading music at Oxford, Peter had a distinguished career in news journalism, working for 30 years on Fleet Street. As the plot of Murder in the Minster thickens, his account of the shenanigans stirred up by the descending press pack is painfully spot on.
Peter commented: ‘Journalism made it difficult to hold a church position, but I finally did twelve years as organist at St Cuthbert’s Church in Wells, near where I live, and I play for occasional services at Downside Abbey.’
Preston, our cathedral organist in the story, is a reluctant hero. Tricky moments at choir practice and the politics of appointing the next head chorister had been his most pressing problems so far. Now Kremlin assassins have descended on his cathedral town with deadly nerve gas, MI5 are on the back foot, and his past starts to catch up with him in an alarming way.
The story races along and manages to be both hilariously funny and horribly frightening at the same time. Murder in the Minster is available as a download from Amazon (see below), and you can read it on any screen device by means of the free Kindle App, including obviously Kindle itself.
Murder in the Minster is available for £2.99 as a download for Kindle and other reading devices. Here’s the Amazon link:
