He has become an expert on ecclesiastical buildings, furnishings, vestments and silver, even though he has no formal qualifications in church architecture. although, he "made an excellent solicitor….the Church was still his first love". His faith “was inextricably bound up with his interest in the church buildings themselves and his response to them. His God was a God of beauty; it was inconceivable to him that God could be worshipped in an ugly building."

ifHe was "quite ordinary-looking .... of an average height, and had brown hair, dusted with grey at the temples, and pleasant hazel eyes.“ But “it was a nice face .... above all a kind face.“

His only real love affair had been with another man, and that had been when he had been 28. He admits, "I've never loved anyone else". Thart is, until he meets Lucy Kingsley. He hates holidays and believes that “the only thing worse than staying at home from holiday is going away", but he has the gift of getting on with all sorts of people and making “them say things they wouldn't ordinarily say.“ This helps to explain his success as an amateur detective.

Kate Charles is the pen na ifme used by Carol Fosher Chase (1950- ). She was brought up in Bloomington, Illinois, where she graduated from Illinois State University, then went on to earn an MA from Indiana University. She moved to England in 1985, where she came to serve as parish administrator for her local church. Her first crime novel was in the series reviewed below, featuring the solicitor David Middleton-Brown. These first books were very well received in the UK, but were felt to be "too English" by American publishers. After open-heart surgery in 1996, she changed direction, and began writing one-off suspense novels. Her first book featuring the clerical detective, The Rev Callie Anson, appeared in 2005.

Kate Charles says that her favourite hobby is visiting churches and she is an enthusiastic supporter of WATCH (Women in the Church). She lectures on crime stories with clerical backgrounds, and lived for twenty years, with her husband and dogs, in Bedford in East Anglia, before moving on to Ludlow in Shropshire, near the Welsh border. Both she and her husband are now UK citizens.

A Drink of Deadly Wine (1991)
A Drink of Deadly Wine describes how (Anglican) Father Gabriel Neville has everything going for him: intellectual prowess, physical beauty, a wife who adores him and twin children. He is vicar of the prestigious St Anne's Church in Kensington Gardens, London, with the prospect of promotion to Archdeacon. But his perfect world is shattered when he receives an anonymous letter threatening to expose a secret from his past – something that could destroy his career and his marriage. The only person Gabriel feels that he can turn to is David Middleton-Brown, a man whom he has not seen for ten years but who had once been his lover. David's discrete enquiries bring to light a host of suspects, ranging from the old server Percy Beard, known to all as 'Venerable' who “was possessed of strongly held opinions about everything, and he never hesitated to share them" to the charming artist Lucy Kingsley, with whom David begins to wonder if he could be in love. But then one of the suspects is found dead, hanging in the sacristy. Is it suicide or murder?

The interesting, if eccentric, cast includes the dotty Beryl Ball, an alarming lady with thick spectacle and aggressive false teeth, who is convinced that “every Vicar who has been here has wanted me, but I've kept myself pure." There also seem a remarkable number of church-connected homosexuals or ex-homosexuals, including both the leading players. But the story holds the interest right from the start and the author proves to be a strong storyteller, although you can't always believe all that she is telling you.

She writes with a real understanding of the Anglican Church, even if the real church may not be quite as queer as she chooses to describe it, and the Angel Gabriel with his "haunted look" and disregard of some of the common courtesies expected of a vicar, is not entirely convincing. But David Middleton-Brown turns out to be a determined investigator even if he eventually has to admit, “I've been so frightfully stupid about this whole business. I've been wrong about everything, all along the way. I've looked at it all the wrong way up. But now now I understand everything. Or nearly everything." And so he does. When he goes on to get a letter from the blackmailer confessing all, it turns out to be from just the person he expected - however unlikely it seems to the reader. But it will be interesting to follow David Middleton-Brown's subsequent adventures in the Anglican church.

The Snares of Death (1992)
The Snares of Death tells the story of Bob Dexter, a prominent and aggressive Evangelical clergyman, who has a great deal of personal charisma, and an unshakable faith in his own righteousness, with a remarkable talent for rubbing people up the wrong way. He always refers to himself in the third person as when he tells his wife, "God has sent Bob Dexter". When he makes the unlikely move to a small Norfolk parish, traditionally Anglo-Catholic, and begins remoulding it in his own image, he manages to upset just about everybody.

His distraught parishioners are not the only ones with good reason to want to remove him, as he had also fallen foul of BARC (British Animal Rights Coalition) , a group of ardent animal rights activists, and his heavy-handed efforts to take over the leadership of an Evangelical protest movement have made him very unpopular with its founder. And there are undercurrents in his seemingly tranquil home life: both his downtrodden wife Elayne and his adored daughter Becca have secrets that Dexter does not even begin to suspect - until the fateful and eventful day of his death, although this does not occur until two thirds of the way through the book.

Solicitor David Middleton-Brown and his artist-friend Lucy Kingsley step in to investigate. As they fall more and more in love, they prove, as she puts it, "a pretty good team", as people who won't talk to David will often talk to her. She is even allowed to stay and overhear the most intimate conversations between Dexter's wife and daughter. The author's explanation that they “had both accepted Lucy's presence as somehow natural" is not entirely convincing. And there are some characters like the charming but hypocritical young priest, ready to take advantage of any innocent young woman, who seem rather novelettish.

It all culminates at the annual National Pilgrimage to Walsingham, where Anglo-Catholic pomp clashes with heated Evangelical protest and feelings run perilously high. It makes quite an interesting story even if the descriptions of Anglo-Catholic rituals and evangelical fervour seem just a bit exaggerated - and the way that Bob Dexter is able to clear his new church so quickly of nearly all its statutory and ceremony sounds too simple. He is determined to mount MISSION:Walsingham to persuade pilgrims of the error of their ways. In fact, even David objects to Walsingham: “It's so tasteless. The architecture of the Anglican Shrine Church is so nasty, and the whole place is over-commercialized, and full of such earnest people. I just can't describe how horrid it is." And Lucy later gives us a full description of its horrors. There is no doubt where the author's sympathies do not lie.

The ending, including the suicide of one of the characters that is dismissed in just a couple of lines, is not too satisfactory. However, the appeal of the book does not rely on its rather unlikely storyline, but on its sometimes almost comic portrayal of life in the Anglican church.

Reviews of the other books in the series to follow.

The author has her own attractively designed but not over-informative website. Apart from this, there is hardly anything about her on the web.

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