Burnt Out on Scorched Grace

Sometimes you just have to admit that you've been played. You fell for an obvious scam that was specifically designed to suck in punters like you and all you can do at the end is carry on with as much dignity as possible. I talk not of NFTs, or MLM schemes, but of Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy. 

In actuality, calling it a scam is unfair. There's plenty of things about Scorched Grace that might excite a publisher, plenty of cool ways to market it, and far worse books have received far more attention. 

But as a punter, I felt decidedly ripped off. 

Scorched Grace follows Sister Holiday, a nun who has given up her hard-rocking, hard-partying queer life in New York for a New Orleans convent school where she teaches music, aids prison mothers, and is firmly of the belief that she is the world's greatest sleuth. When a fire kills the school janitor, and then another kills one of the nuns, she starts investigating. Slap a cool stained-glass cover on that book and you might as well take my cash now.

The problem is, Sister Holiday is an unstable character at best. She is still new to being a nun and still overwhelmed with memories of the trauma she has left behind in New York. She spends her days melting in the New Orleans heat, while forced to wear a scarf and gloves at all times to hide her neck and hand tattoos, and cleaning all the stained glass windows (as a frequently received punishment for disobedience). From the very start she is oppressed and unhappy in her situation. 

The fires trigger her even more, and her sleuthing - erratic, ill-informed, unplanned - seems increasingly desperate even as she paints herself as a detecting genius who people are out to silence. 

After eventually learning her reasons for turning to the convent, I think it would be difficult for even a person of faith to argue that she's doing it for right or healthy reasons. Her reasons might even be selfish - surely taking vows to punish oneself rather than out of pure devotion is a no-no? I yearned for her to break free and find her peace (and an outlet for her faith) in some kinder way. 

But you can't have a sleuthing nun if they aren't a nun, and so Sister Holiday ends the book as resigned to the life as she began it. I guess that's Catholic guilt for you. 

The mystery itself is... um... well. 

What I assume happened is that the author had a great idea for a  'punk lesbian sleuthing nun', sold it, then was rather startled when they discovered they actually had to write a mystery for her to sleuth. 

I said recently that I never attempt to work out who did it in mysteries because I like the surprise, and that if I figure it out before the end, I consider it a poor mystery. I also criticised The Maidens for last minute reveals of the killer's motivation that were never mentioned before. 

In this case, I solved it myself about three chapters in by simply choosing the least obvious suspect and waiting. This is a more sensible approach than Holiday took. Her sleuthing was on par with watching The Traitors - accusing literally anyone based on evidence as varied and shallow as 'you have a weird vibe' and 'I haven't accused you in a while'. The solution doesn't come about - as hoped - by a seemingly chaotic detective piecing the clues together with unexpected insight, but because Sister Holiday accidentally sees the massive burn mark on the arsonist's arm. It doesn't take Sherlock to figure that one out.  

A good mystery sets up the suspects and then lets their secrets come tumbling out as we - and the investigator - learn more about them. Sister Holiday - as a nun - should be well placed to get people to open up and learn their secrets. Instead we know as much about the suspects at the end as we do at the beginning - the only change being that we can now say whether they are or aren't a murderer. 

As for the other things that annoyed me... the fire investigator who is reluctantly playing the 'buddy' in Holiday's buddy-cop fantasy announcing at the end that she's a drug addict, lost evidence, has been fired, and is going to be a PI instead is... a choice. 

Holiday also covers for the murderer, and since the murderer is (spoiler alert) a nun it's a rather uncomfortable echo of other things the Catholic church has covered up. It's also hypocritical considering Holiday ruins a man's whole life because she finds vodka in his flask, and also beats up a clearly mentally ill teenage boy during the course of her investigation. 

I still gave this book three stars ('readable but I am never going to think of it again') so I suppose I shouldn't be quite as negative as I am. The character of Holiday - when not being a detective - is engaging and as a character study, the book works fairly well. The flashbacks to her old life are interesting enough. I liked her approach to her faith and her devotion to her music. 

They managed to portray the nun-life with a realistic mixture of cynicism and respect (how accurately is for others to judge). You don't come out thinking that the church is evil, but you don't come out wanting to sign up either - which is probably a fair balance. Her biggest complaint is that the church is patriarchal and... well... even the worst sleuth might have picked up that before signing on the 'yes I want to be a nun' dotted line. But not our Sister Holiday. 

If they got Natasha Lyonne to play Holiday, with all of Natasha Lyonne's quirky empathy and irresistible charisma, we might have a hit TV show on our hands. But it would definitely be on one of those 'tv adaptations that were better than the book' lists. 

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