Villainous vicars and perished parsons abound in this collection of short stories from the British Library. Some members of the clergy are sleuths, some are suspects and some are victims in these stories that range across almost a century, from 1911 to 2006, seventeen stories to perplex you.

A broad selection of authors from the well-known – G K Chesterton, Ellis Peters – to the obscure – Ormond Greville – by way of the most reviewed author on this little blog of mine – Paul Doherty masquerading as Paul Harding in this case, as well as others such as Joyce Porter, H C Bailey, Cyril Hare and Edmund Crispin.

There are a couple of ways of reviewing short story collections – story by story or just flagging the best ones. Well, I read this in my holiday nine-book-blitz and there’s no way I can remember enough for a story-by-story summary, so let’s just mention the highlights.

Glossing over Paul Doherty’s The Confession Of Brother Athelstan, other to mention that I’ve already written a blog post about it, other than to say that I think Martin is wrong to say this is the earliest Athelstan short story – The Monk’s Tale is from 1991 and indeed is the only other short story featuring the little friar. It’s nice as well that it’s back to back with a Cadfael story as it does demonstrate, to me at least, why fans of a mystery story should be searching out Paul’s work…

Well, that wasn’t much of a gloss, was it? The other highlights for me were mostly from later in the collection, apart from the rather fun J S Fletcher tale. The Dover tale from Joyce Porter has a very good punchline, but I’m not sure how much I could take of Inspector Dover in book format – but there are too many short stories that have the detective taking a laxative as a core plot point. Peter Lovesey’s The Virgin And The Bull, Michael Gilbert’s Holy Writ and, in particular, Robert Barnard’s Sins Of Scarlet, a worthy winner of the CWA Short Story Dagger.

So, another good collection from Martin Edwards and the British Library, and hopefully one that will introduce more people to the hundred-plus mystery novels by the mighty Paul Doherty…