Weeding the shelves July 23rd

I've accomplished removing four books from my pile. I cheated a bit by returning two books unread but the goal is to diminish the pile so I figure it counts. One of the books has been around quite awhile in the pile and I wish I had picked it up sooner. A dead man out of mind/Kate Charles explores a series of deaths in a "high catholic" Church of England church. Suspects abound and the reasons why the suspects might commit murder are valid and keep the reader guessing. I enjoyed entering the world of the Church of England as well as meeting our sleuths Lucy Kingsley and David Middletown-Brown. Since the book is older and, as an American, I tend to think of the C of E as very similar to the Episcopal church so some of the issues seemed a little dated to me including the opposition to women priests; a subplot of a man who is probably hiding his homosexuality by being married to a woman; and a 14 yr old who is disturbed by her aunt living with a man. I also felt that I would have understood the characters of Lucy and David better if I had started at the beginning of the series. David had had an affair with someone in the church and I was unsure as to why he stopped seeing this man and started seeing Lucy. This kept pulling me out of the current story. Overall the I did enjoy the mystery and when I can resume hitting the library stacks I intend to check out some of the other titles in the series.