Review of D.M. Greenwood

The MD has urged me to frivolity. I am glad to obey. I consequently spent much of August re-reading a series of outstanding detective novels by D.M. Greenwood. She has a loyal following. She deserves an even wider one.

Readers of the great Dorothy L. Sayers enjoy her plots but even more her characters in their now-forgotten milieu. Dr Greenwood is also strong in plot, but her milieu is the modern Church of England. Her protagonist is the Reverend Theodora Braithwaite, a six foot one Anglican deacon in her early thirties. This setting will be as alien to many readers as was the clubland of the Sayers stories. But it provides a palette of characters and situations as rich as any soap opera.

The stories are well-constructed and intriguing. Dr Greenwood is at home in the inner city and the countryside, and her one sustained venture into the suburbs is very sharply observed. She delights in horses and knows how they are ridden, though they are always purely incidental to the plot. She also rather likes policemen, servicemen, high church parsons and the Book of Common Prayer.

Her pithy turns of phrase are a delight.  One half-way decent prelate (others are anything but) has a kind smile that “forgave people before they were even aware they needed forgiving ; this often made them feel guilty”. A thoroughly unpleasant archdeacon (others are pretty decent) who has never been known to smile, is known throughout the diocese as Jolly Roger.

Dr Greenwood knows her church, its politics, its strengths and its weaknesses. She knows her thrusters, her toadies and her careerists, and also her victims, her heroes and her pockets of decency. The psychology (and spirituality) of her characters is penetratingly accurate. They and their situations are carefully drawn and never to excess. Promotion of individuals well beyond their capacity is a constant theme. The power of truth is another.

The novels do nothing to bolster one’s faith either in this institution or in any other. But they fill one with admiration for decent individuals who try to make institutions work despite those who don’t seem to care or (much worse) care for the wrong things. For all Dr Greenwood’s mordancy, there is not the slightest trace of bitterness. One ends each novel feeling better for the experience. There are nine volumes, and every one is a coconut.

Ophicleide