by Margaret Douaihy
SYNOPSIS
Sister Holiday is more faithful than most, but she's no saint.
When Saint Sebastian's School becomes the target of a shocking arson spree, the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and their surrounding community are thrust into chaos. Unsatisfied with the authorities' response, chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun Sister Holiday becomes determined to unveil the mysterious attacker herself.
To solve this high-stakes mystery, Sister Holiday will have to reckon with the sins of her chequered past. Her investigation leads down a twisty path of suspicion and secrets in the sticky, oppressive New Orleans heat, turning her against colleagues, students, and even fellow Sisters along the way.
REVIEW
Sister Holiday is, at first glance, the most unlikely practising Sister. Heavily tattooed, a heavy smoker and hiding her past relationships with women from the other Sisters of the Sublime Blood, she feels a pressure to prove herself and fit in. When she witnesses a fire set deliberately at their school and the death of a member of staff, she immediately sets about investigating what happened. However, as one of the only witnesses, with no alibi and after finding one of her standard issue blouses in her classroom bin with burnt sleeves, she soon finds that she has no choice but to crack the case in order to clear her own name. After the initial irritation and despite many protests, Sister Holiday unofficially teams up with Riveaux, the fire investigator from the New Orleans Fire Department and they begin to work through the arson case.
What I loved about Scorched Grace was the sense of humour running throughout the story. The crimes that take place in the book and the topics covered could have gone too heavy, but the sarcasm and amusing interactions between the characters kept it much lighter.
There was a subtle level of crime in this book. There were deaths involved but they weren't massively violent as it was made to look like the victims could have been accidental deaths rather than murder with a fire to distract from what was really happening. Because of this there wasn't a lot of gory detail involved and allowed the main focus to be on Sister Holiday. As she works through the clues and evidence, flashbacks are used to give glimpses of her life before joining the Sisterhood and an idea evolves about her need to solve the mystery and the reasoning behind that.
The fantastic and strange juxtaposition of Sister Holiday's faith and place in the church, compared with her past which was filled with alcohol, drugs, tattoos and punk music is what made Scorched Grace so special. She is such a unique character and I can see plenty of scope here for Sister Holiday to continue her investigations in future sequels.
BLOG TOUR CHALLENGE - SCORCHED GRACE SONG As part of the Blog Tour, Pushkin Press asked us to share a song which came to mind while reading Scorched Grace. For me the song I thought of was Garbage - Only Happy When It Rains. It has that alternative / grunge feeling which I think Sister Holiday would approve of, and the dark lyrics are about someone who sees the world differently to other people, about being depressed but being happy with your situation or feeling like that is what you deserve.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margot Douaihy is a Lebanese American originally from Scranton, PA, now living in Northampton, MA. She received her PhD in creative writing from the University of Lancaster in the UK. She is the author of the poetry collections Bandit/Queen: The Runaway Story of Belle Starr, Scranton Lace, and Girls Like You. She is a founding member of the Creative Writing Studies Organization and an active member of Sisters in Crime and the Radius of Arab American Writers. A recipient of the Mass Cultural Council’s Artist Fellowship, she was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, Aesthetica Magazine’s Creative Writing Award, and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation’s Hemingway Shorts. Her writing has been featured in Queer Life, Queer Love; Colorado Review; Diode Editions; The Florida Review; North American Review; PBS NewsHour; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Portland Review; Wisconsin Review; and elsewhere. Margot teaches creative writing at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, NH, where she also serves as the editor of the Northern New England Review. As a coeditor of the Elements in Crime Narrative Series with Cambridge University Press, she strives to reshape crime writing scholarship, with a focus on the contemporary, the future, inclusivity, and decoloniality.
Thanks to Pushkin Press - @PushkinPress and Margot Douaihy - @MargotDouaihy for the opportunity to read and review.
Publisher: Pushkin Press Genre: Crime Fiction / Mystery / Women Sleuths
ISBN: 978-1805335085
Pages: 320pp
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