Death Makes A Prophet

Welworth Garden City is a rarefied little town with a plethora of litter baskets and flowering shrubs, and absolutely no bill-boards or pubs. Among its elite it boasts a high percentage of vegetarians, non-smokers and non-drinkers and is the home of the Children of Osiris, usually referred to as the Cult of Coo or Cooism. Founded by Eustace Mildmann, and originally based on the mythology of Ancient Egypt, it has adapted and modernised to include any number of dogmas, until now in 1947, it finds itself ‘an obliging religion because one could find in it pretty well anything one looked for.’

Eustace the High Prophet is a dreamy, softly spoken widower who lives with his son Terence in the mockest of mock-Tudor mansions on Almond Avenue and Peta Penpeti a man with the manners of ‘a French count’ is Prophet-in-Waiting. There are six High Priests of the Inmost Temple but the force behind the movement and the financial prop is the Hon. Alicia Hagge-Smith who manages to increase the numbers from a select few to several thousand. Banded together by a common faith maybe but one that conceals emerging jealousies, intrigue and hostility.

The first half of Death Makes A Prophet is set in Welworth and is told with a lighthearted humour that’s mostly at the expense of trances, elevations to Higher Planes, yogi’s and bean rissoles but there were lots of engaging characters with hints to a sinister past and who set the scene for a more complex plot which comes when the setting moves to Sussex and the first Cult of Coo Summer School, held at Old Cowdene Estate, Mrs Hagge-Smith’s home.

There are poisonings, shootings, mistaken identities and red-herrings aplenty. As the plot thickens and bodies start to appear Chief Inspector Meredith is called in from Scotland Yard to try and make sense of it all. It did turn into a more routine murder enquiry but it moved along at a good pace and I enjoyed the whydunit as much as the whodunit.

But, reading this was like having a huge cold jug of memories poured over me. Memories of that horrible middle-aged, white male humour that treats everything outside of the mainstream as a joke, and this includes women. All the female characters were stereotypes, if they were young they only had one thing on their minds and that was to ‘trap’ men, and if they were old they were either harridans like Mrs Hagge-Smith or worse still a ‘crazy old biddy’ like gentle spinster Miss Minnybell.

I know this is always a problem with reading from this era and I do think we have to read in context but this really reminded me of a certain type of ‘humour’ in the ’70’s, and brought it home to me how much has changed for the better and how delighted I am not to be living in 1947 despite enjoying so much from that decade!