Review: Better than SkyFall
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 29, 2013
John Waddington-Feather appeals to me more and more. I have just read MOORLAND MYSTERY, after reading three others in his Inspector Hartley series. This author must be better known than I realized, because a couple of ideas in this novel might have been ripped off by researchers for the current James Bond flick. "The last rat standing" and the burning manor house are two that immediately come to mind.But what differences there are between good storytelling and mind-addling fantasias of digital stunts! Blake Hartley, policeman and priest, hunts down perpetrators by talking to the homeless and hapless who camp in his church cemetery. He can be found sitting in a pub, visiting suspects in Victorian brick rowhouses, or strolling over the quiet moorlands, observing the hue of heather. Meanwhile, James Bond has to wrestle his evil-doers on the tops of train cars, ducking down as the train inevitably enters tunnels. He accidentally wrecks cars with a steam shovel. He tiptoes behind tinted plate glass in a Shanghai skyscraper, watching a shadowy figure assemble one of those assault weapons we are seeing too many of these days. To add interest, the killer and the theater audience are distracted by neon signs in carnival colors, twisting and turning on the building's exterior. Blast! Crash! Blood burst! Bare shoulders on mixed-race, goddess prostitutes. Etcetera.There are prostitutes in Waddington-Feathers' works, too, but Hartley doesn't have to use them personally to make the point that it is a nasty trade. Hartley also has awareness of modern mobility, and cross-fertilization of cultures. His Sergeant is Ibrahim Khan, Oxford-educated, superb golfer, and welcome in communities where an Anglican priest might be out of place. The author's prejudices show, but they are nice ones, allowing that an influx of "Asians" adds interest to a town that already has absorbed Germans, Poles, Pakistanis and Indians. The outlander villains in MOORLANDS MYSTERY are Eastern Europeans. I don't know how W-F stands on Bulgarians as members of the European Union, but he is pretty much up to snuff on immigration, social change, and global greed. He uses Hartley to express a wish that things could be better for his English flock, many of whom now are drug-addicted. He assigns Hartley to answer to Superintendent Donaldson, an-unworldly "upper-crustian," but his character's words are few and well-chosen.John Waddington-Feather is approximately 80 years old. Like his hero, he has been a non-stipendiary Anglican priest. He ministered to prisoners for over 30 years. In addition to his detective series set in West Yorkshire (where there are a few spots still noticeably rural), he has written a series of children's books meant to be protests against pollution and urbanization.The Bradshaw MysteryThe Graveyard Mystery (Blake Hartley Detective Novels)The Museum Mystery (Blake Hartley Mysteries)