Review – A Darkly Hidden Truth

 Three crises strike Felicity Howard on the same day at the College of the Transfiguration in Yorkshire. The first is self-generated: her hasty decision to become an Anglican nun. The second arrives in a letter from her estranged mother, announcing her imminent visit and adding, as an aside, that she’s divorcing Felicity’s father. The third is the mysterious disappearance of a sacred icon, Our Lady of the Transfiguration, from the Community Church. Felicity refuses Fr. Antony’s request to help him investigate the icon’s disappearance, and she ignores her mother’s arrival in order to visit a convent in pursuit of her vocation as a nun. But the other two crises converge on her at the convent: Fr. Antony and the mother arrive, and a sacred icon from the convent is stolen by violence. A friend who is a specialist in iconography also disappears. A third icon is stolen from yet another convent, and the missing friend is found murdered. Circumstances force Felicity to join Fr. Antony in solving the mystery.

            Geographically, their task leads them over much of the east coast of England. Historically, it leads them through much of medieval English church history and the past and present illicit activities of mysterious secret societies. Both paths lead them to ever-increasing personal danger. And throughout this gripping suspense narrative run the ironic thread of mother-daughter conflicts on the liturgical day of Mothering Sunday and the lingering question of whether Felicity should choose the convent or Fr. Antony.

In this novel, Donna Fletcher Crow again delivers much more than suspense. As with A Very Private Grave, the novel is enriched by the author’s detailed knowledge of Medieval church history and iconography so that the past conditions and explains the present-day mystery. Further enrichment comes from the author’s intimate knowledge of the English and Scottish countryside, a knowledge that extends to specific churches and transportation schedules (“a three-hour train ride with eleven stops”). It is a pleasure to read an author with this surprising breadth and depth of interests, one who also understands the significance of the historical materials she provides. The reader of this thriller will emerge pleasantly educated as well as entertained.