Way back when I was in college, a history professor taught that we could discuss any historical event by covering the social, political, cultural, religious, and economic causes. No, a murder mystery doesn’t hinge on those causes. However, I appreciate Cora Harrison’s Reverend Mother Mysteries because they include all those essential elements in the background as she covers mysteries in the 1920s in Cork, Ireland. Murder in the Cathedral has a clever, very appropriate solution, although I welcome all those elements in an excellent historical mystery. They add realism to the background of the story.

Reverend Mother Aquinas is surprised to receive a visit from the Bishop of Cork’s Anglican Church of Ireland on Christmas Day. Dr. Thompson has the unhappy task of telling her about one of her students. The archdeacon of the church died during the Christmas Day service. It was only as they ended the service and sent everyone home that they found the body of seven-year-old Ende O’Sullivan. Dr. Scher, the police surgeon, suspected they were both poisoned by cyanide.

Inspector Patrick Cashman, one of Reverend Mother’s former students, suspects that Ende was a tool for the archdeacon’s death. There was a broken window, and Patrick believes Ende scampered across the roof, through the broken window, dropped poison in the archdeacon’s chalice, and then, as a reward for his actions, received a packet of chocolate candy. Ende, a poor little boy with a single mother, ate the chocolate immediately, chocolate that had cyanide in it.

None of this is a spoiler. That’s the opening of Murder in the Cathedral. It’s not a spoiler to say Patrick has very few suspects, really just the primary employees of the church. But, it’s a difficult case, and it takes a few hints from a former fellow student, Eileen MacSwiney, now a law student; and it takes Reverend Mother’s ingenuity, to put together all the clues. Over the course of this series, Reverend Mother Aquinas has seen some tragic deaths. “There was something about the callous use of a small boy that made this one of the worst crimes that she had known, in this city full of death from violence and from deprivation.”

While it’s Patrick’s job to satisfy the politics of his job and discover who killed the archdeacon, neither Patrick nor the Reverend Mother let go of the forgotten murder. Who killed a young boy?

Murder in the Cathedral is the ninth book in the series. It’s a dark series set at a time of poverty, death, and turmoil in Cork. Earlier books in the series deal with the IRA at times. It features a woman who has witnessed both aspects of the economic divide, growing up in wealth, and then serving the poor of Cork. Reverend Mother Aquinas’ knowledge of people of all classes offer her the glimpses at life that enable her to see solutions that are not easily discovered. It’s a remarkable historical series.

Cora Harrison’s website is http://coraharrison.com/

Murder in the Cathedral by Cora Harrison. Severn House, 2022. ISBN 9780727850522 (hardcover), 224p.

FTC Full Disclosure – I read a galley available through NetGalley.