Epeolatry Book Review: To Coventry by T.C. Parker
Disclosure:
Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.
Title: To Coventry
Author: T.C. Parker
Genre: psychic mysteries, werewolf and shifters suspense
Publisher: Nefarious Bat Press
Publication Date: 1st March, 2024
Synopsis: The young men of Coventry are dying, violently and bloodily, and nobody seems to know why. There’s no obvious reason for their deaths, and no connection at all between the victims.
Enter Sunny: demonic, immortal and bored to distraction by her new life in London. She needs a new challenge – another reason to get up from her fainting couch and grab the world by the throat. And the Coventry murders might be just what she’s looking for. A chance for her to channel her inner sleuth, dust off her fedora and, if she’s lucky – gather the suspects together for a shattering final denouement…
A pitch-dark comic-fantasy murder mystery with a light touch and a lot of anger, To Coventry takes the Hummingbird story in an unexpected direction – and brings a whole new meaning to some very old nursery rhymes…
I have read pretty much all of T.C. Parker’s work, my introduction being Salt Blood and then moving through the El Gardener thrillers, the occult Nest of Feathers, weird western Salvation Springs and back to folkloric horror in Hummingbird, the first of the Hummingbird Murder Mystery series. This is a writer unconstrained by subgenre and even genre and delights in breaking down boundaries and mixing things up. To Coventry continues that tendency. There is murder, obviously given its subtitle, there are elements of folk lore and mythology with its central character the demonic Sunny, and a play on an old legend relating to the city itself. If you know Coventry – and I do as I used to visit my grandparents there regularly throughout my teens – you will guess which legend I refer to!
Strangely, and despite having read the book’s predecessor, Hummingbird, this story made me think more of Parker’s El Gardener thrillers. In those tales, she created a ‘sisterhood’ bound by love – or at least respect – but with a sharp sense of humour. I can see elements of those relationships and personality quirks in the characters of Sunny and Bunny (another supernatural entity), in their ‘old lady’ style of bickering which adds some great humour.
But there is a dark side to this investigation, the theme it explores which has triggered the murders. It is there in the content warnings listed at the front: sexual assault, misogyny, domestic violence, stalking and harassment, revenge porn. The victimisation of the female, the seemingly never-ending violence and abuse against women, rarely receives appropriate justice in real life. In To Coventry, this justice is delivered in brutal fashion and I am sure many readers will delight in this element of comeuppance.
Despite this darkness, however, the combination of humour, the references to the cosy mysteries of yesteryear and the author’s obvious enjoyment in writing which bleeds off the page, makes it a highly entertaining read. For me, T. C. Parker is certainly giving Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club a run for his money! (The Thursday Murder Club is my favourite cosy mystery btw.) I truly loved To Coventry and can’t wait for the next in the series.
/5
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Stephanie Ellis writes dark speculative prose and poetry and has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Her longer work includes the folk horror novels, The Five Turns of the Wheel, Reborn, and The Woodcutter, and the post-apocalyptic/horror/sci-fi The Barricade, and the novellas, Bottled and Paused. Her dark poetry has been published in her collections Lilith Rising (co-authored with Shane Douglas Keene), Foundlings (co-authored with Cindy O’Quinn) and Metallurgy, as well as the HWA Poetry Showcase Volumes VI, VII, VIII, and IX and Black Spot Books Under Her Skin. She can be found supporting indie authors at HorrorTree.com via the weekly Indie Bookshelf Releases. She can be found at https://stephanieellis.org and on Blue Sky as stephellis.bsky.social.
