Who Killed the Curate?

Lady Lupin #1

by Joan Coggin

When Lady Lupin turned her back on the gay society life to marry the Vicar of Glanville, she didn't expect she'd have to turn detective in this comic detective novel first published in England in 1944 and set at Christmas 1937.

Genres: Mystery, Christmas, Cozy Mystery, Fiction, Humor, British Literature, Mystery Thriller

157 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Joan Coggin was born in 1898 in Lemsford, Hertfordshire, the daughter of the Rev. Frederick Ernest Coggin. Her mother, who was the daughter of Edward Lloyd, founder of Lloyd's Weekly London Newspaper, died when she was eight, and the family moved to Eastbourne, where Coggin lived until her own death in 1980. She was educated, together with her sister Enid, at Wycombe Abbey, a setting she would later use for her girls' school stories, written under the pseudonym Joanna Lloyd.

Leaving Wymcombe in 1916, Coggin became involved in the war effort, working as a nurse at Eastbourne. After the war she worked with the blind, and returned to her schoolgirl interest in Guiding. She suffered from a mild form of epilepsy, but aside from the inability to drive, it did not greatly impact her life. Her first novel, And Why Not Knowing, was published in 1929, and was followed by a series of mysteries featuring the amusingly inadvertent detective, Lady Lupin Lorrimer.

Reviews

[Carol, She's so Novel ꧁꧂ · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5★

This is a read from the Book Pool in Retro Reads & I tried guys, I really tried but I'm just not vibing with this book at all!

I enjoyed the account when Lupin (what a name!) & Andrew first met, some of this Society Darling's first days living at the vicarage were mildly amusing, but I didn't like Lupin & found her a superficial, often cruel Bright Young Thing, which is always a character type that I have trouble warming to. The book was written in 1944, but Coggin was using character types from when she was young - or this book could have been set in the 1920s. It was definitely pre-war. It took forever for the curate to be murdered & he didn't feature much in the book before that. & the book had become painfully unfunny.

I can understand wanting light, escapist fiction at the time this book was written, but I have two old favourites waiting for me, so this is a DNF at 65%.

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[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lady Lupin is a very kind hearted and completely scatter-brained 'detective'. She did make me laugh though, and I would like to read more of her adventures.

[Melody Schwarting · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What I like about Glanville," whispered Duds, "is whether you go to a party or to a carol service or to an inquest, you are sure to meet the same people. It makes it so cosy. I feel as if I had lived here all my life."

Imagine Wooster without his Jeeves but as a silly young vicar's wife. Absolutely charming, impeccable Christmas vibes, lots of laughs. It's a cozy house party without all the chill stuffiness of a Poirot house party mystery. Here I was rooting for everyone to get exonerated rather than caught. I caught on to most of the twists, but even then, there was further twistiness that I hadn't quite imagined.

Extremely enjoyable for the season, perfect for reading by the Christmas tree!

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved Lady Lupin and literally laughed out loud many times as she is gamely trying to be a thoughtful hostess and do her "job" as The Vicar's wife when she often has the wrong idea of what is going on.

Miss Gibson asked me if I was interested in temperance, and I said I thought it was horrid to drink too much; I started to tell her about one night at the Crimson Canary, when some people got tight, but even that didn’t seem to bring us really together.”

I was OK with the mystery, too.

[Alisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This started out absolutely hilariously, a sort of goofy read about a vapid but sweet girl who unexpectedly meets and marries the man of her dreams. But once she gets to her new village, it becomes a bit more blasé, and I had a hard time keeping track of the various spinsters who create various kinds of trouble.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lady Lupin Lorrimer, a scatterbrained society beauty, has married the much older but very attractive Vicar of Granville, a parish in Susses, and expects to find life very quiet compared to the social whirl she has enjoyed in London. Instead she finds herself overwhelmed with parish duties, being expected to cope with the Sunday School, Mothers Union, Girl Guides etc. She has this exchange with her husband:
“Andrew, how is it that plain parsons ever get married?”
“I suppose they have hearts of gold.”
“I suppose so, but I don’t think I’d marry anyone for a heart of gold. I know after a dreary day any of good works it wouldn’t cheer me up to look at someone with a heart of gold.”
However she soon finds herself involved in solving a murder, and life is more exciting than she had ever known it could be. A very entertaining mystery with a charming heroine.

[Tiziana · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. Abandoned at 40% through the story.
I'm sorry but it's impossible for me to continue reading a book full of useless chatter between stupid and bigoted women of the parish.

The PREMISE of the book was cute:
Lupine Lorimer, a young girl from London, a little superficial and used to worldly life, reluctantly participates in a party which will also be attended by a priest.
Fate wants the two to chat happily all evening and fall in love.
After the wedding and the happy honeymoon, they settle in his parish, where a circle of women (many of whom are spinsters) do nothing but fill her head with duties that concern the parish community.
During one of the events they meet another curate who will later be the victim (but 40% still nothing has happened) and Lupen and her husband Andrew will have to find the culprit to exonerate a friend.
____

I found the situations and dialogues bland and flat. If there had at least been a thread of humor I could have better accepted pages and pages of "nonsense". The protagonist, not only seems idiotic at the beginning, but she has nothing that makes me fond of her and the people who are part of the parish are unbearable... I abandon the book and certainly won't try to read other books by this author.
NOT RECOMMENDED

[Julie Durnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars I enjoyed this first Lady Lupin mystery-she's quite a different main character/sleuth from the normal cosy. In fact, she could be very ditzy, to the point of feeling annoyed with her. But it was amusing and a nice cast of characters.

[Vee Bee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book follows two story lines. The most obvious, of course, is in the title. Who, indeed, killed the curate? By the time you have finished the book, you will have the answer. The second, and much more interesting story line, follows the seemingly empty-headed, twenty-one year old socialite Lady Lupin after she meets and quickly marries a man no one would have ever thought she would find attractive. The man in question is a 43 year old vicar of a small church in a small town. This second story line follows her somewhat difficult adjustment to life in a small town as a young vicar's wife. This is why I rated the book as deserving four stars. The author writes convincingly of Lady Lupin missing her easy-going, fun-seeking single life in London while still finding the sacrifice worth while in her happy marriage.

If you are looking for a tight, logical, and riveting mystery, you probably want to keep looking. However, if you like a bit of a cozy British mystery with character development, look no further. The author introduces us to Lady Lupin and her husband, but you also get to know some other characters that I hope make an appearance in the subsequent novels written by this author. Further, I enjoyed the setting-- England in the late 1930's I believe-- and through the authors writing of the story, I got to know what life was like during that time.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lady Lupin is blonde, beautiful, well-born, and--let's face it--scatterbrained to a truly remarkable extent. When she falls madly in love with a Church of England vicar, much older than she is, she finds herself unqualified for her new position. Her good heart will carry her a long way, but her husband's parishioners are a confusing lot. When one of her favorites is suspected of murdering the curate, however, Lupin and her friends unite to find the real culprit. These books are not easy to find, but well worth the effort.

[Daniel Myatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a lovely way to end the Christmas season - with a murder and a village filled with suspects...

This book was equal parts Wodehouse (P G) and Heyer (Georgette) with a good dash of Christie (Agatha), and I loved it.

Lady Lupin marries for love, and her husband is vicar to the 'quiet' village of Glansville only from the moment she arrives she's inundated with unexpected visitors and requests to join the local societies! Then that curate dies, and all hopes of a quiet Christmas are off...

Silly, fun and filled with wit.

[Barb reads......it ALL! · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun Christmas season mystery, set in a small cozy village.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was a delightful read. In full honesty, I think I liked it so much due to watching Marilyn Monroe's performance in "Gentleman Prefer Blondes" just prior to reading this. Lady Lupin Lorrimer Hastings is blonde, beautiful, insanely sweet, yet isn't all that terribly bright. Which makes her sleuthing rather comical in a sense, if you can follow her ramblings to how she has made her deductions. Which many cannot... myself included.

This was a perfect light holiday murder mystery set in 1937. The twenty one year old socialite, Lady Lupin, shocks even herself, in falling in love with the forty three year old vicar of St. Marks. Despite their age differences and the fact that Andrew is a vicar, it seems to be love! Hardly the material for a vicar's wife, Lupin is instantly swept into the hold (motherly and also in a hostage sense, depending on the individual) of the "excellent women" in the church who feel it is their duty to guide in her all things vicar wife must take interest in. Which that entire sub plot alone lends itself to some hilarity.

When a curate is murdered and the accused is innocent. Lupin and her socialite friends down for Christmas, must save the day.

I have to mention this. The back of my book has a blurb comparing Joan Coggin to E.M. Delafield and Nancy Mitford. I've read from both Delafield and Mitford, and don't feel this is an accurate comparison. Please don't read this thinking you might get the same feel/enjoyment you get from Delafield or Mitford. This is an entirely different sort of novel and not written at all in the style of the two authors she was compared to.

[Cphe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing read overall. Found the main character Lady Lupin to be without substance and downright irritating. Mystery component was better portrayed in the second half of the novel when Lady Lupin took a back seat to the proceedings.

[Karelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entre la grippe, le brouillard mental et le nonsense de Lady Lupin, j'étais pas sûre de bien saisir tout, mais c'était, dans tous les cas, particulier comme livre.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rang out the old, and rang in the new with a mystery set during Christmas 1937 and featuring the incomparable Lady Lupin Lorrimar (Honestly, can you beat a name like that?), the scatterbrained sleuth and wife of much older (43! Gasp! That is old!) and handsome vicar, Andrew Hastings. The novel from 1944, nicely skewers small town village life as Lupin cluelessly navigates the nuances of being a vicar’s wife as she attempts to solve a murder while balancing a tiresome schedule of meetings for the Girl Guides, Mother’s Union and Temperance Society. She gets it all wrong but somehow manages to stumble on the truth. Joan Coggin wrote four mysteries featuring Lady Lupin. This is the first I have read and it was a joy. Marvelous characters, witty lines, small town jealousies and all veddy, veddy British. If you aren’t an Anglophile you may have a hard time sifting through arcane social behaviors but it’s a fun read and I’m looking forward to her next adventure.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure why but this was quite a slog. It took ages for me to read this slender novel and I honestly don't know why. It was British, there was a vicar and people drinking tea, a nice little murder etc - these are all elements firmly in my wheelhouse. As much as I wanted to like the heroine, Lupin, her constant stream of conscious jabbering and getting her stories all mixed up were more annoying that humorous. I think this would be much more palatable as a BBC production on Masterpiece where all the slapstick conversation would be more effective than on the page.

[Lynnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun and delightful book with a charming, scatty and also slightly irritating protagonist - Lady Lupin Hastings. It was a good plot with a satisfying ending.
Also the second time that I've come across a dog in fiction called John! (Sally on the Rocks).

I have the fourth book and hope Galileo Publishers will publish the other two this year.

[Genevieve · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did like it, but the screwball comedy personality of Lady Lupin was dialed up just a trifle too high, moving from Dowager Duchess from the LPW books to "I might want to throw a vase at her if we were trying to have a conversation."

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining, but the main character, Lady Lupin, stopped amusing me with her scatteredness about halfway through.

[Justine Shenton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quirky and Amusing

[Lisa Brantly · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 very fun

[Lisa Kucharski · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book in the Lupin series, but I have read a later one in this series before this. She does get a bit more focused, than in this one. If you've come to find a serious serious dark mystery story, this is not for you.

You have to come into this knowing there will be a murder, and you will be in Lupin's (Loops) world of scattered thought and once in a while, the ability to make, or be a link in a chain of information that will help solve the case.

It's a fun story, filled with holiday gatherings, and also one that is really tricky to solve. Luckily a family member of Lupin's husband is there to also help. The characters in the story are both exaggerated and on point with human behavior. I'm even more impressed with Joan Coggin's ability to create a story with Lupin at the center in a whirligig of memories and associations and lack of general information and have a real mystery plotting as well. Come for the characters and stay for the solution to the crime.

[Jazz · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 STARS | An hilarious Golden Age mystery begins when 22-year-old Lady Lupin, London socialite, marries 45-year-old vicar Andrew and takes up residence in his parish, a small Sussex village. Lupin is more than a bit of a scatter-brain, but well-meaning and sincere in her wish to meet the needs of her husband's calling. Little does she know how many eccentric church members are lying in wait. When the less-than-likeable curate is found dead, and her new friend Diana is suspected, Lupin begins her first adventure as a amateur detective. Often despite herself, Lupin uncovers the secrets of the tight-knit community. Some scenes are laugh-out-loud funny as Lupin often misunderstands, forgets, and misspeaks.

This is the first in the series of 4 books, so Lupin has room to grow on her journey to being an amateur detective. There were one or two church ladies too many for me to keep straight, and the mystery itself is less than a puzzler, but the ride was fun. I'll look forward to the others in this series, culminating with the fourth book, which appears to be the highest rated.

[Squeak2017 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cosy crime caper. Delightful characters, well evoked in their pre-war setting, full of crime solving enthusiasm. Thoroughly enjoyable read.

Re-read ready for the next Lady Lupin novel to be re-published.

[Mattie]

My dad gave this to me last Christmas, and I was aiming to read it before this one so I could give it back to him, but then it turned out he had his own copy and had already read it, so luckily I didn’t have to rush.

At its best this has shades of PG Wodehouse in the good-hearted but empty-headed heroine Lady Lupin; at its worst, though, it has shades of Amelia Bedelia. This definitely could have done with another editing pass to tighten it up.

Plot-wise it all hangs together, though the clues are quite few and far between, and everything fees a bit muddled—I really struggled to keep all the characters straight. We have two sets of couples with colour names (the Greys and the Browns), and then seemingly infinite spinsters in the Girl Guides that I couldn’t differentiate from one another. The very best of these is Violet Oliver, who turns out to be a communist, and I do admire the book for humanising her and bringing her into the fold. Then we have Lupin’s friends Tommy and Duds—more or less surplus to requirements—and her step-nephew-by-marriage Jack Scott, who is in the Secret Service and therefore brings some much needed intellect to proceedings. His uncle Andrew, Lupin’s older husband, is the local vicar, and it’s quite a sweet—if abrupt—romance between the two (between Andrew and Lupin, I mean, not Andrew and Jack). I think that covers pretty much everyone except for Diana and June.

The main suspect, Diana Lloyd, is an interesting one. She’s a thinly-veiled authorial insert: Diana is a children’s author who is now working on a detective novel; Coggin had previously published children’s books under the name Joanna Lloyd, and this was her first detective novel. Diana is 38; in 1937, when the novel is apparently set, Coggin would have been 38-39. When Diana is introduced, she seems very much to be coded as a lesbian—indeed, I think Coggin is very much playing with that expectation. Her relationship with her younger housemate June turns out to be quite different, however. Incidentally, Coggin never married and was not known to have any children, which could mean nothing.

Oh, I’m forgetting the victim, Mr Young—the titular curate. I did not believe in him as a character at all. The only people who really seemed like people in the novel were Diana, Violet and Andrew (who doesn’t actually do that much). Dr Brown is also quite human, but he does almost nothing. Lady Lupin doesn’t precisely seem like a person, but she is entertaining and consistently characterised. The others are pretty thin, and I often didn’t find their behaviour very credible.

This is by no means top-tier, and to be honest I’m not the biggest fan of “cosy crime”—I like Christie because I think she’s an often great and almost always interesting writer, and most of her stuff actually isn’t “cosy” at all; I also love Cadfael, which is probably closer to cosy, but beautifully written and with a very immersive setting. This feels much more of a pastiche, and that’s fine but I don’t find it all that compelling. That said, I think this would go down a treat as an ITV or Channel 5 Sunday teatime drama; it’s bright young things meets 30s village whodunnits, which sounds extremely marketable to me.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Da tempo seguo il podcast e la newsletter di Caroline Crampton, una scrittrice inglese emergente e appassionata di detective novels ambientate nella prima metà del secolo scorso, e nell’ultima e-mail consigliava il romanzo della Coggin, un giallo natalizio ad imitazione di Agatha Christie, con ambientazione quasi interamente domestica e adatto ad essere rappresentato a teatro. La storia si dipana perlopiù all’interno di un paio di case in un villaggio quasi fiabesco, la cui vita ruota intorno alla chiesa e alle sue iniziative. Per lady Lupin, appena arrivata da Londra come sposina novella del prete, la prospettiva parrebbe quella di una noiosissima esistenza tra riunioni del comitato femminile, ma a movimentarle le giornate (e risvegliare di soprassalto il lettore nel frattempo assopito) per fortuna ad un certo punto ci scappa il morto.
La protagonista però non ha di certo l’acume di Miss Marple e si dimostra ridicolmente svampita da pagina uno, proseguendo con incrollabile fiducia a blaterare frasi sconnesse e monologhi assurdi per oltre la metà delle pagine.

Verso la fine, il giardiniere Jack non ce la fa più e glielo dice chiaro:

“Darling, you are very beautiful, but if you had been born into the working classes you would have been sent to a special school.”
“What sort of school?”
“For borderline cases. They don’t differentiate in the same way among the rich, so they never get cured.”

Lo dice lui, ma è evidente che lo pensavano tutti.

Comunque, la diversamente sveglia moglie del prete (non quello assassinato) riesce a dare un importante contributo alla soluzione del caso e persino il via ad una miniserie di altri tre romanzi, che però non credo leggerò nel breve periodo.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lady Lupin Lorimer is a rather scatty young woman when she meets, and marries, Andrew Hastings the vicar of St Marks parish in Glanville, Sussex. Lupin brings scattiness to a new level, spending much of the first half of the novel getting everything wrong, being hopeless at events and meetings, but being generally good natured and kind.

At Christmas, Lupin asks her old friends Duds and Tommy Lethbridge to stay and Andrew's nephew, Jack, a British secret service agent, is also luckily visiting. Luckily, as Mr Young, the curate, dies suddenly and it is discovered he was poisoned. It later emerges that Mr Young was a blackmailer and that more than one member of the parish have secrets.

This improved in the second half of the mystery, as Jack steps in to both bring some organisation and rally the troops in order to clear the name of one of the parishioners as he has fallen in love with her daughter. As such, this is pretty much a typical GA mystery, with murder off stage, a rather unsympathetic victim, a little romance and a generally good feel. Overall rated 3.5.

[Lillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love comedic mysteries set in the golden age between the great wars. I did go into this book with great expectations and in the beginning was a bit afraid Lady Lupine's lack of brains would actually detract from the story. She is very hopeless in the beginning. But as the plot progresses and other less scatty characters come into view, the story improves greatly. The mystery of who killed the curate seems like it should be easily solved but turns out he liked to blackmail people, so suspects start to pile up. Not a complicated mystery but an interesting twist on poisoning. The gems of this novel are the characters. They are drawn very well. The dialogue is witty with lots of banter back and forth. One ends up cheering the group on as they desperately try to find the killer. Sadly, this series consists of only four books but I plan to collect them all. This one in particular will become a permanent member of my holiday reads collection.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joan Coggins’ background as a clergyman’s daughter who spent most of her adult life in Eastbourne devoted to the Girl Guide movement doubtless goes far to explaining much of the milieu of this, the first of her four detective novels.

Her main protagonist, Lady Lupin, the daughter of an earl and here newly married to a clergyman with a seaside parish, is a heroine of the prattling, unconsciously wise and occasionally perceptive variety , a kind of undereducated female take on the Peter Wimsey stereotype. I found the character quite, quite unbearable.

One wades through positive acres of footle and waffle knowing that one has spotted the killer of the appalling curate within the first couple of chapters, hoping for a twist which never comes.Other readers may find it all very amusing and occasionally even slightly satirical but I found it tedious in the extreme.

I have now read the first and the fourth in the series . Time for a rest.

3.25 stars.