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Weidenfeld & Nicolson, August 2006
Reviewed by Sally Roddom
Sister Pelagia is a young Russian nun, known by her religious community as
a walking disaster with freckles. She is asked by the Bishop of Zavolzhsk
to investigate the killing of a much loved white bulldog. To be honest,
the only person who loved the beast was his owner, the Bishop’s great-aunt
Marya Tatishcheva, who is an elderly widow. Tatishcheva has become deathly
ill as she fears the same fate will befall her two remaining bulldogs.
There is a large assortment of family members gathering to see if the old
woman will recover. Tatishcheva has tormented her various beneficiaries
for years by changing her will almost weekly. The Bishop feels that
someone is trying to hasten Tatishcheva’s death by killing her dogs. But
is it someone who is on the will, and wants to remain on it – or someone
who has been taken off it? Sister Pelagia travels to the estate of
Tatishcheva to find out what is going on.
PELAGIA & THE WHITE BULLDOG has been translated from Russian by Andrew
Bromfield and is the first of three Sister Pelagia novels to be translated
from Russian into English. It is a cosy mystery, written along the lines
of the Golden Age mysteries. I couldn’t help but compare Pelagia to Agatha
Christie’s Miss Marple. She is naturally curious about people, and takes
notice of every little thing that goes on. Like Miss Marple, Pelagia
knits, and is a kind-hearted person. However, unlike Miss Marple, I just
couldn’t warm to Sister Pelagia. I found that none of the characters came
alive for me; I just didn’t care about any of them. The whole book hovered
on the edge of being boring and longwinded. The potential was there:
spurned lovers, greed, jealousy, politics and power struggles are all in
the plot. It just didn’t make it in to an exciting read for me.
Aug 2006 review originally published on Murder & Mayhem
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