Mystery of Chant

Guest Post by Isabel Anders

When poet/novelist Diane Marquart Moore asked me to collaborate with her on a clerical mystery, probably set in a religious community, my first reaction was “You don’t need me to do that!” I had read her fine mystery Nothing for Free and felt that—despite my own interest as an avid reader of all varieties of mysteries—she was much farther along that path and clearly knew how to construct, pace, and narrate already, so what could I contribute?

But Diane insisted that she would like my input for theological discussions the characters would have, and adding complexity to the plot, including more red herrings—which I tried to help provide, once we actually got into the writing.

Of course, we were greatly affected by the commercial success of Dan Brown’s The da Vinci Code, when suddenly religious thrillers became especially hot. However, we didn’t plan to follow that model with Chant of Death, but rather to confine the story to an American Benedictine Abbey, a cloistered setting that allowed for evil making its unsavory appearance where one might least expect it.

In the process, we turned to a transcendent theme—the role of plainchant in Benedictine tradition, and suggestions of its power to create unity through chanting as a daily practice in community. Here was enough “glue”—a theme to allow our story to unfold in real time, and in the setting that Diane knows best (and I have at least experienced), southern Louisiana, in a fictional monastery modeled on St. Joseph’s, an Abbey she has admired and visited.

I had always wanted to attempt writing a mystery myself, and had, years ago, bought the book The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery (though I hadn’t cracked it open, and my weekends had been filled with many distractions to keep me from following its step-by-step prescription). So after my initial reluctance, I agreed that we would settle on some points about the proposed mystery—and jump in, adding to each other’s writing, editing drafts as we went, working from a developing storyboard—and see what happened.

The result is our Father Malachi mystery, Chant of Death, which was published by Pinyon Press in 2010, and is also available on Kindle. As Jo Ann Lordahl, author of Princess Ruth: Love and Tragedy in Hawaii and other books wrote in her review: “Divine unity, pedophilia, love, chant, voodoo, monks and the power of seven. The rousing mystery, Chant of Death, combines spiritual wisdom with incredible real life observation. It’s a rare blend of spirituality, intrigue, and psychology. Makes me think: Not ‘Roll Over Beethoven,’ but ‘Move Over Dan Brown!’ An excellent read, I was fascinated.”

Though I have been primarily an author of nonfiction books, my own interest in detective stories goes way back, and I do read many mysteries of various series, constantly trying to learn how they are constructed—what works and what doesn’t.

Having loved Dorothy Sayers’ Peter Wimsey novels for years, I find it helpful to note Sayers’ own example in her book The Mind of the Maker—how she put certain theological principles into play in her works. As a theological writer myself, I found this especially relevant. Sayers wrote: “Perhaps the first thing [an ordinary person] can learn from the artist is that the only way of ‘mastering’ one’s material is to abandon the whole conception of mastery and to co-operate with it in love.”

Sayers’ first commercially successful writings were detective fiction, and she eventually rose to the very top of that field. In Howard Haycraft’s The Art of the Mystery Story, a collection of every notable essay on the detective story before 1948, her name is mentioned more frequently than that of anyone except Sherlock Holmes. She wrote mostly about fictional Lord Peter Wimsey, a wealthy gentleman and scholar, lover of rare books and fine wines, who solved detective cases because he enjoyed it, and was good at it, and because it was a job worth doing.

All of Sayers’ mysteries are entertaining at rather high artistic and intellectual levels—my favorite being Gaudy Night, which brings to a turning point the romance of Peter Wimsey and mystery writer Harriet Vane (who seems modeled on Sayers herself, somewhat ideally). Their developing relationship keeps one reading the books in order for the depth of character revelation that underpins the stories.

As one critic, Mike Tooney, has written: “The creation of Harriet Vane, and Sayers’s increasingly three-dimensional portrayal of her both in relation to Lord Peter and grappling with her own dilemmas regarding her work and what kind of life to choose ushered in the transition of the traditional mystery from primarily a puzzle—to a puzzle embedded in a character-driven novel.”

Sayers did us all a favor in this regard, and we consider ourselves to be writing appreciatively in her train. But Sayers didn’t overlook the entertainment value of her stories either.  On a light note, she has said: “Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors within.”

Our novel, Chant of Death, has both its horrors and its moments of discord and irony—not the least of which is simply a brutal murder (or murders) occurring in a holy setting.

As to the puzzle: it is for our readers to grapple with, and we hope that will be done with maximum enjoyment, akin to that we had in constructing it.

Isabel Anders is also co-author with Diane Marquart Moore of the Father Malachi mystery Chant of Death (Pinyon Publishing, 2010). She lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, and has authored more than 20 books. Her website address is www.IsabelAnders.com