What do you get when you mix a poetic writer with the mystery genre? More metaphors than you can shake a stick at. Laugh out loud metaphors. Stunningly beautiful metaphors. All interlaced within an exciting mystery that is as different as it is classic in feel.
The main character of Margot Douaihy’s debut mystery novel Scorched Grace isn’t your normal bookshop-owning or cat-loving amateur sleuth. Holiday Walsh is a queer, heavily tattooed, smoking, swearing, thoroughly punk nun with a gold tooth. She is a member of the Sisters of the Sublime Blood in New Orleans, an order with only four nuns, Sister Holiday being the youngest by decades. She is required to wear gloves and a scarf to cover her tattoos, which she willingly does in exchange for refuge from a chaotic and tragic previous life.
But here’s the thing. Her devotion to God is not a front; she is a genuine believer. “The Lord is near to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit. I was broken, crushed, and it brought the Lord closer to me,” she says. After previously believing that religion was punitive nonsense, life events turn her in another direction. “I needed a way to make all the contradictions of my life fit. God helped it fit.” But lest you think Sister Holiday left all the punk behind, there’s also this prayer: Holy Mary, Mother of God. Let the afterlife have central air and hot women.”
But lest you think Sister Holiday left all the punk behind, there’s also this prayer: Holy Mary, Mother of God. Let the afterlife have central air and hot women.”
Speaking of air conditioning, the cast of characters seem to enjoy little of it. The New Orleans summer is a main character in the novel. Oppressive is an inadequate word to describe the heat and humidity in the city. I had to turn off my space heater a few times after reading vivid descriptions like “Steam rose from the asphalt of a parking lot, braiding the air into a tessellation.” The amount of sweat pouring down their faces could fill a dozen saltwater fish tanks. “Everything in New Orleans is overdue, overgrown, dripping.”
The Sisters of the Sublime Blood are teachers at the school next to the convent. When someone sets fire to one wing of the school, killing the school janitor, Sister Holiday heroically saves two boys caught in the conflagration. Her instinct is to investigate and find the killer, which she does while navigating around two police detectives and a perfume-making fire investigator. Soon more fires and the death of a nun cause panic in the community. It doesn’t take long for the police to suspect Sister Holiday herself of the murder after evidence is planted against her. There are many twists and turns and the threads of the mystery weave skillfully toward a truly surprising reveal at the end.
It doesn’t take long for the police to suspect Sister Holiday herself of the murder after evidence is planted against her.
Almost as mysterious is Sister Holiday’s history. What was she running from? The answer is carefully doled out in flashbacks that describe a woman at the end of the line. An alcoholic, punk guitarist, her wounds and terrible choices inform the woman now seeking redemption. This is painful stuff and you feel her despair. Then you root for her to keep her act together long enough to truly change. She’s a deeply layered character, one I was behind all the way.
The twisty plot, gorgeous language, and the renegade nun as a main character bring this novel into its own category. One often thinks of the amateur sleuth as belonging in cozy mysteries. This is not that. Scorched Grace is a novel both exciting and profound. The crisp pacing keeps things moving briskly forward while the writing takes you deep. I can’t ask for more than that.
Margot Douaihy
Gillian Flynn Books
