The Chorister at the Abbey

Slow pacing and unmemorable characters weigh down Howell's second Norbridge Chronicles mystery (after 2006's The Flower Arranger at All Saints), set in the north of England. Shortly before Christmas, tenor Tom Firth, a member of the Norbridge Abbey chorus, trips over the bloody corpse of Morris Little, the leader of the group's bass singers, in a blacked-out corridor of Norbridge College. Alex Gibson, of the college's finance department, who finds the traumatized Firth, has been something of a recluse after the loss of a parent to dementia, but an amateur investigation into Little's murder soon revitalizes her. Skeptical of the official line that local toughs committed the crime, Alex pursues the real killer with the aid of a TV producer friend and the friend's significant other. The solution may strike some readers as a bit muddled, while others may find the police's near invisibility implausible.