The Body and the Blood by Molly Crighton

Molly Crighton’s The Body and the Blood reads as an assured and atmospheric debut crime novel that finds its mystery in one of Dunedin’s most imposing spaces in the centre of its gothic heart. When elderly cathedral organist Sybil Marsden falls from the organ loft of St Paul’s Cathedral, the death is quickly treated as an accident. Only Ivo Hart, an awkward police administrator more at home with records than relationships, notices a small inconsistency that suggests something has been missed. Unable to pursue the matter officially, he turns to Halia Knox, a disgraced former investigative journalist whose own reputation has collapsed under the weight of past scandal.

The pairing gives the novel much of its charm. Ivo and Halia are not polished amateur sleuths so much as two damaged, difficult people who cannot leave a wrong thing alone. Both sit on the edge of respectability, which makes their covert investigation plausible within the heightened logic of cosy crime. They should not be detecting, yet their outsider status gives them access to angles the formal investigation overlooks. Crighton is less interested in procedural realism than in character, atmosphere and the pleasures of research: archives, old newspapers, choral music, institutional memory and the buried tensions of a community that prefers discretion.

The cathedral setting is arguably the book’s greatest strength, using the imposing architecture as pressure. St Paul’s is a closed world of vestments, incense, music, hierarchy and silence. The language of Anglican ritual gives the novel texture, while the contrast between sacred space and human pettiness creates a satisfying unease. Rivalries, resentments and secrets gather beneath the polished surface of worship, and the title neatly holds together the novel’s interest in faith, violence and bodily consequence.

Dunedin itself also matters. The city’s layers of history, weathered buildings and closeness to wild coastal spaces give the story a pleasingly local charge. Crighton understands that crime fiction depends on ghosts, not necessarily supernatural ones, but the lingering presence of old choices, old injuries and old versions of the self.

The novel does ask for some suspension of disbelief. Its coincidences and amateur sleuthing belong firmly to the cosy tradition, and readers wanting a hard-edged police procedural may find the mechanics a little elastic. Yet this is also part of the book’s design. The Body and the Blood succeeds because it knows the pleasures of its own niche: cathedral crime, local secrets, odd-couple investigation and an atmosphere thick with music, ritual and suspicion. It is a confident first novel from a writer with a sharp eye for setting and a clear affection for the genre she has entered.

Reviewer: Chris Reed

Moa Press