The Body in the Belfry
by Katherine Hall Page

This is Book One of the Faith Fairchild series

This book is the beginning of a growing list of “Body in the _____” series. Its heroine is Faith Sibley, a native New Yorker who has started a gourmet catering service. She meets and falls in love with Tom Fairchild, a young minister who whisks her away from her beloved home town to a much different life in rural Massachusetts. Faith is trying her best to fit into the role of pastor’s wife in a small town where everyone’s family goes back several generations and where everyone knows everyone else’s business. While taking a walk with her baby son, Benjamin, Faith discovers a dead body in a belfry. The body is that of Cindy Shepherd a young, willful girl who had made plenty of enemies in their small town. The suspects include Cindy’s fiance, and several men with whom she had had affairs and was subsequently blackmailing. Faith’s curiosity and unofficial investigations eventually lead her and Benjamin into grave danger. (Karen Potts on Amazon.com

This is the first Katherine Hall Page work that I’ve read and, once again, I praise the web-site Fantastic Fiction where I can find out what series an author has written and the chronological order of the books in each; and our public library system which allows me to borrow from other library systems in our province – in this case, it was the Halifax Regional Library that lent me this book.

I recognize that The Body in the Belfry is not great literature. Maybe it’s not even great mystery. But I liked it.

I liked Faith Fairchild, whom various reviewers have called unlikable, a meddler and a snob. A snob she may be–especially about food and clothes–but she is not unlikable. And if she and her ilk didn’t meddle, how would we have the mystery?

Having left the city to live in the country seven years ago, I identified a little with Faith on that score. Faith has just moved and is in that difficult transition period that befalls all who make that move. Maybe she’ll mellow with time. If not, then her “snobbery” will continue to highlight the charming and not-so-charming idiosyncrasies of her fellow townspeople.

Despite the red herrings, the mystery wasn’t overly tight. I guessed the killer half-way through, although I had a harder time nailing the exact motive.

Despite the flaws, I really enjoyed this time with Faith and I’m quite sure I’ll read at least a couple more in the series (there are 18 now–it’s certainly a busy little town with a lot of dead bodies). Hall Page has a wicked sense of humor: for example, Faith reflects that her catering business Have Faith had initially been mistaken by some as “an escort service for the guilt ridden”, and perhaps as the series continues, the mysteries will be more polished.

I’m willing to give it a go. Three and one half stars out of five.

Reading Challenges: The Body in the Belfry satisfies four of my reading challenges: the First in a Series Challenge, the New To Me Authors Challenge, the Support Your Local Library, and 100+.

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P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

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