The Dying Light

Sister Agnes #5

by Alison Joseph

Young and fiercely independent, Sister Agnes Bourdillon has never felt the need of a wimple to express her spirituality. But her strength is tested by her secondment to Silworth, a South London women’s prison. She does, however, find the work compelling, as she attempts to negotiate the network of bullies and victims, loyalties and hatreds, prisoners and jailers, searching to understand the often violent histories that lie behind each woman.

Then the father of Cally Fisher, one of the most turbulent inmates, is shot dead. The chief suspect is Cally’s boyfriend. Reminded unnervingly of how she is losing her own mother, who is rapidly retreating from reality in a French nursing home, Agnes finds that she too has become entangled in a dark world that stretches further than the prison walls…

The Dying Light is one of Alison Joseph's great mysteries which has the reader turning the page as Agnes gets embroiled in a crime which threatens her own being.

Genres: Crime, Mystery

10 pages, Audio Cassette

First published August 25, 2015

About the author

Alison Joseph was born and brought up in London. She studied French and Philosophy at Leeds University, and then worked in local radio in Leeds as a producer and presenter. She moved back to London in 1983 and worked for a Channel 4 production company, making short documentaries. In 1985 she set up her own company, Works on Screen. Productions included Through the Devil's Gateway, a series about women and religion presented by Helen Mirren, which was broadcast by Channel 4 in 1989. A book of the series was published by SPCK. Sister Agnes became a reality with the publication of Sacred Hearts in 1994. This was followed by The Hour of Our Death (1995), The Quick and the Dead (1996), A Dark and Sinful Death (1997), The Dying Light (1999) and The Night Watch (2000). All the Sister Agnes books are published by Endeavour Press and Allison & Busby in the UK, and the first three are also available in German.
Other novels include Dying to Know (published by Endeavour Press), featuring D I Berenice Killick. Alison is also the author of two novellas in which (a fictional) Agatha Christie is the detective. They are Murder Will Out and Hidden Sins, both published by Endeavour Press. The third is due out Autumn 2016.

Alison has also written short stories for Radio 4, for YOU magazine, for Critical Quarterly and for various women's magazines, as well as abridging novels for Radio 4's Book at Bedtime and The Late Book, including the award-winning production of Captain Corelli's Mandolin. She is the author of about twenty-five plays for BBC Radio 4. Her most recent short story is Samir's Lament, available on Kindle Singles.

Alison lives in London.

Reviews

[Jillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! I was surprised, not so much by the pleasure of the writing and engagement with the narrative, but with the seriousness of its treatment of the ethical and moral issues thrown up in the process. It is really refreshing to meet characters who are working through their faith, what it means in the twenty first century and in relation to crime, punishment, privacy and communality.

Well worth reading, and I look forward to more.

[eric gent · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Dying Light

I have been a fan of Alison Joseph for many years, but this is the first time I've read this story. I find her characters leap out from the pages they are so real. I have known a few nuns who live and work in the community, not quite like Sister Agnes, but world wise and gutsy.

[Cleopatra Pullen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do like my crime fiction to be served up from an unusual perspective every now and again and so when, I came across a review of this book that not only indicated it was UK crime but that the setting was in part at least within a woman’s prison, oh and the chief protagonist is a nun, I had to investigate more closely.

The Dying Light is actually the fifth in Alison Joseph’s Sister Agnes series and although it was clear while reading the book there was possibly some background to Agnes herself that is pertinent to who she is, it didn’t in any way distract from the main story.

The story is on the surface at least, a simple one. One of the women in the prison is told her father has been murdered, not only that but the suspect is the young woman’s boyfriend, the man she was hoping to return to on her imminent release and turn over her new leaf. Everyone assumes the crime is drugs related but Cally is convinced that her boyfriend Mal is innocence, and asks Sister Agnes for help.

The mystery takes us to the dark world of crime but one with a very human face. I am usually a reader who is turned off by reading about in-fighting amongst villains or gangs but because of the way the way this is presented I was as keen as Agnes to understand why Mal would have turned on Cliff.

It helps that Agnes is quite unlike the nun personae that I expected. She’s a young woman, very devoted I’d say not so much to her faith but to doing the right thing. She has her own struggles of course, during this book, her mother is very ill and there are calls from her native France for her to return to see her matched by a reluctance from Agnes to do so. Is she, as her friends suspect, using the struggles of the women in the prison where she works a front for avoiding her own problems?

It is hard for a writer to truly transport anyone to an unfamiliar setting but I thought that Alison Joseph chose key points of prison life that her readers could easily imagine to draw us through into a building which is full of despair, and violence along with some hope for a better future. The power struggles between the women, and those in charge of them, was realistically but not overdramatised skilfully recreating the atmosphere.

I’d say that The Dying Light is a book that had me thinking about some of the issues it raised almost as much as the mystery itself. That isn’t to say this is a book you can only enjoy if you are religious, far from it, what it does is bridge the gap between the religious and the philosophical whilst never forgetting that its prime purposes is to entertain the reader.

[eggiecom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remarkable and brilliantly written!

This is an absolutely fantastic novel. I was completely captivated. Sister Agnes has risen from the book and become real to me. I can't wait to read the next book in the series, and I do highly recommend it.

So, why just four stars? Sadly, the book is filled with typographic errors. In some places the number "1" is used instead of "I." In others, words ending in "rn," like "born" are written as "bom." In many, many places, where there should have been a paragraph break when a new person speaks, the paragraph just runs on and you lose track of who's speaking. It's such a pity. A lot of this could be solved by running a simple spellchecker. It's distracting, and the book deserves so much more.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

The indomitable sister Agnes is working in a prison. She has to deal with all kinds of women who've been damaged, whilst coming to terms with the fact that her mother in France is slowly dying. Still when a death occurs she can't help getting involved.

[sharon helgason · Rating 3 out of 5]

First book with Sister Agnes with hopefully more to come. A bit verbose in certain areas but a lot of info re the penal system. I am watching for er next book in this series.