Zoom meeting

Malcolm Lorimer last spoke to the Club in April 2016 about his publishing side of life. This time he spoke more particularly about Clergy and Crime and detailed some of the books which he has written on the subject. The first being Saints and Sinners.

Saints and Sinners is a book of twelve stories linked by the themes of clergy and crime. Each is about a clergyman or woman and their involvement in crime, either as the perpetrator, victim or detective.

Some of the clergy are good, others weak and some evil and they are from different denominations: Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, with one story set in a monastic community.
The book explores questions about good and evil in the context of life and the Church. The stories are not linked together and all have separate characters. Not all are murders and in one no crime seems to have taken place!

In one of the stories the perfect hiding place for a dead body is discovered; another explores the life of someone who as a soldier commits murder and then becomes a monk. There is one set in rural Yorkshire and is told in a series of letters and one set at the time of the American Civil War.

A dead vicar is found in the library in one and there are very strange goings on at a Ministers barbeque in another. There is a very dubious Dean of a Cathedral and a curate who collects inheritances. A good clergyman is maligned and a Pastor's son is determined to tell the truth, whatever the cost.

Themes of the stories include murder, deception, lust, greed, envy, hate and witchcraft, the usual attributes found in the average church congregation!

Another book was The Sermon That Led To Murder

Can a sermon ever lead to Murder?

Rev Charles Jowett preaches a very unusual sermon about confession which moves his congregation to tears and also for some to confess things in their lives which they had covered up and hidden.

A few weeks later the vicar is found dead in his garden, was it an accident or has someone a guilty secret they couldn't afford to be revealed?

A story about confession, the past and human failings and what they may lead to.

Also in the book : The Second Epistle.
The continuation of the first story about a cruise in Norway where events in the Second World War come to the surface and have deep repercussions.

Robin Latham in proposing a vote of thanks to Malcolm stated that he was more used to dealing with four-legged flocks rather than  the two-legged variety that Malcolm has had to contend with in his ministry, but thanked Malcolm for an intriguing insight into the other side of his life as a writer.