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Reverend Richard Coles captures the rhythms of English village life in his reading of his debut novelThe debut novel from broadcaster and cleric Reverend Richard Coles, Murder Before Evensong features Daniel Clement, amateur sleuth and rector of St Mary’s church in Champton, an English village surrounded by verdant hills and country lanes lined with primroses. Set in the late 1980s, the book introduces us to a cast of characters including: flower arrangers Stella Harper and Anne Dollinger; an aristocratic landowner, Bernard de Floures; a retired headmaster Ned Thwaite; and Daniel’s no-nonsense mother, Audrey, who “sometimes reminded [Daniel] of Pope Pius IX, who responded to the loss of sovereign powers over the papal states by making himself infallible”. Continue reading...