"Tamsin & the Church Ladies," by Susan Daly, in Malice Domestic 17: Mystery Most Traditional, edited by Verona Rose, Rita Owen, and Shawn Reilly Simmons, Wildside Press, 2023.
This is the third story by Daly to make it into this blog. It has just about everything I want in a cozy: interesting small town setting, eccentric and memorable characters, a reasonable motive, and good writing.
It's a small town in Ontario in the 1970s and the first source of conflict is an unlikely match-up. Tamsin, our narrator, is a Women's Studies professor when the "discipline was so new the paint was still wet on the department head's door." She marries Mike, an Anglican minister, even though that isn't her faith.
Would you be astonished that some of the congregants disapprove of her? Me neither. And when Tamsin finds the corpse of her husband's most vocal opponent floating in the river, things get more complicated.
I do have one complaint with this story: the solution comes way too easily, pretty much unearned by our sleuth. But it's a fun trip to get there.
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