Murder Before Matins

Inspector Andrew Coggins and Sergeant Fred Sump #2

by John Reeves

When the Prior of Tathwell Abbey--soon to be made abbot--is found murdered, Inspector Andrew Coggin and Sergeant Fred Sump of the Metro Toronto Police find themselves with nearly the entire order of Gilbertine nuns and monks as their suspects

186 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1984

About the author

John Michael Reeves. Composer, broadcaster, author, b Merritt, BC, 1 Dec 1926; BA classics (Cambridge) 1948. Educated in England, he began conducting Gregorian chant and renaissance polyphony as a teenager and won a choral scholarship to St John's College, Cambridge. Returning to Canada after graduation he taught classics at the University of British Columbia, then joined CBC radio as a music producer in 1952, branching out later into productions of dramas, documentaries, and religious programs. He retired from the CBC staff in 1987, but has continued to produce programs on a freelance basis.

Reeves has written extensively on music, particularly in broadcast scripts such as 'A London Trio' (1966) about Handel and Bach, and the 'St Matthew Trio' (1990), a cycle of poems about Bach and Passion music. Music is also a major theme in his three detective novels Murder by Microphone (Toronto 1978), Murder before Matins (Toronto 1984) and Murder with Muskets (Toronto 1985). He has written texts for his own compositions and has contributed the libretti for Norman Symonds' Opera for Six Voices (1961) and Lucio Agostini's opera David (unfinished in 1991).

Reviews

[B.V. · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Reeves composed religious music, which is why it's not surprising the second book in his series with Inspector Andrew Coggin and Sergeant Fred Sump of the Metro Toronto Police was 1984's MURDER BEFORE MATINS, a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award.

The story is set in the cloistered world of Tathwell Abbey where the Prior is found murdered and suspicion falls on the entire order of Gilbertine nuns and monks who live in seclusion there. When Coggin, Sump and Constable Nancy Pringle are assigned to the case, they learn the victim was destined to be made Abbot and that even allegedly holy people are capable of dark ambition and violence.

In an interview from 1986 in Books in Canada, Reeves acknowledged that he lost his faith gradually, partly because of a "disillusionment with the institution of the Church." Even so, Murder Before Matins is a sympathetic portrayal of monastic life and includes a subplot of Constable Nancy Pringle's own struggles with her faith.

Reeves' mysteries are less about suspense typical of other police procedurals and more in the traditional puzzle-solving detective fiction (he even works in lists, diagrams, puns and one crossword puzzle in each novel). "Books in Canada" aptly wrote that "If Sherlock Holmas and Dr. Watson are respectively brilliant and dim, Andrew Coggin and Fred Sump shed light on crime about equally, less like a priest and acolyte than a happily married couple. Coggin is good at sifting details and making deductions; Sump is intuitive, disarming, a shrewd judge of character."