The last thing you would expect to find in a convent is a murdered nun. But there was poor Sister Anne, murdered, stashed in a broom closet and then perfunctorily thrown down a flight of stairs into the cellar. The job of solving the crime goes to Inspector C.D. Sloan of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Berebury Division of the Calleshire Constabulary, who makes his first appearance here, in the first published mystery novel (1966) of Catherine Aird (the pseudonym of Kinn Hamilton McIntosh).

The murder is complicated by the Guy Fawkes Day burning of a certain nun-like effigy at the nearby Agricultural Institute, introducing scores of possible suspects to the original crime. The principal of the school is most anxious to maintain good relations with the convent, as he has arranged for his upcoming wedding to be conducted there. The local caretaker and a very helpful priest are not wholly above suspicion, either. Then you have a cousin of Sister Anne who just happens to show up around the time of her death, and a look into the dead nun's life before entering the convent suggests there could very well be a financial motive behind her death.

With increasing pressure from his unsympathetic boss to solve the crime, and with the murder weapon remaining elusive, Sloan is compelled to do his investigative work alongside one of the younger members of the force, Detective-Constable Crosby, who would go on to assist Sloan in several later Catherine Aird novels.

The Religious Body is a relatively short, eminently readable English mystery, aided by the growing repartee between Sloan and Crosby, the elusive motives for the crime, and Aird's natural storytelling prowess. The only criticism I have concerns the solution of the crime, as I do not believe I was given enough of the information at Sloan's eventual disposal to personally finger the perpetrator and explain the motive. Still, it's a great mystery read, the first of many from one of England's more popular mystery writers.