TORMENTING WITH CHRISTIANS

For a Clue, Look Up: A mystery writer confesses to religious conviction. (TOM NOLAN, July 11, 2003, Wall Street Journal)

Detective fiction shares many concerns with religion: the contest between good and evil, the struggle of right with wrong. Back in the 1920s and '30s, the mystery genre included several noted practitioners also well-known for writing on spiritual matters: G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, Father Ronald A. Knox. But in our secular age, when it's even money if God will be capitalized (let alone mentioned) in a crime novel, mystery writers who admit to an interest in things of the spirit seem as rare, as Ross Macdonald once wrote, as the cardinal virtues in Hollywood.

Yet we now have Seeking Enlightenment . . . Hat by Hat (Putnam), a charming and thought-provoking spiritual memoir by Nevada Barr, the award-winning author of the mystery series featuring National Park Service ranger Anna Pigeon. This trim book--subtitled "A Skeptic's Path to Religion"--may be even more of a surprise to readers familiar with the adventures of Ms. Barr's heroine: Anna is an avowed atheist.

"But I don't think there's any such thing as a true atheist," says Ms. Barr from her home in Mississippi. "It's more that anything you're told doesn't make sense, so you just sort of bumble along assuming there's no cohesive higher power . . . even if there's one that occasionally will throw an earthquake your way." [...]

And the author--married now for eight years to her second husband, a retired park ranger--says she has no intention of forcing her series heroine toward some concept of monotheism akin to her own. "She just doesn't seem to be leaning that way. . . . And if you break your own character rules, it's bad art."

But that doesn't mean that Nevada Barr is letting Anna Pigeon off the hook: "I have been bringing religious people across her path, just to see what happens. . . . I think I will enjoy tormenting her with Christians."

There's an especially interesting set of books that incorporates a religious element, though from a fairly hostile standpoint: Robert Irvine's Moroni Traveler series. Traveler is a gentile private eye in Salt Lake City who tends to run afoul of the Mormon Church and its political/social/religious concerns. Though the portrayal of the Church is likely offensive to some, the almost theocratic nature of the society makes for great dramatic tension. Approaching from the opposite angle is Richard Dutcher's film, Brigham City, which features a Mormon sheriff investigating and trying to deal with the presence of evil in his community. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 11, 2003 7:16 PM