A Review By The Rev’d David R. Boulton

Myself having been for nine years or so “the Bishop’s Man,” (in the Southern diocese of the Free Church of England), the title of this novel certainly caught my eye. However, the eponymous cleric  of MacIntyre’s novel turned out to be nothing like me, either in his job or his personality. Nor was his Bishop anything like mine.

 For a start, Father Duncan MacAskill, the main protagonist, is a priest of the Church of Rome, sent to the small rural parish of Craigneish, somewhere in the wilds of Canada for a ‘rest’. Craigneish is very close to the place he grew up, so he has a history with many of the people of the parish. Prior to this, he had spent most of his priesthood as the Bishop’s enforcer, nicknamed ‘The Exorcist’, whose job was to discipline wayward clergy and to suppress potential scandals.

 In Craigneish, he now finds himself beset by loneliness, tragedy and a crisis of faith. It is a powerful book, this, and one in which a sense of hidden secrets pervades every encounter, every conversation. The sense of place is overwhelming – this remote fishing village on the cusp of decay, with its lost and lonely inhabitants, rings with the conviction of truth.

 The book is masterfully written; Linden MacIntyre manages to achieve a fine balance between involvement with his characters and a suitably authorial distance between himself and their tale of institutional corruption and its terrible consequences. Father MacAskill is a richly complicated character, reminiscent almost of Graham Green’s whisky priest in The Power and The Glory. Not someone I would find an easy colleague. But his story I found quite un-putdownable.