Death,detective fiction and the meaning of life

"Death was darkness, there was not light to be found there. Death was attics and cellars, it smelled raw, of mice and soil, and loneliness."
Henning Mankell, Kennedy's Brain - translated by Laurie Thompson.

I spend large parts of my life (and rather too much of my income) searching out, buying and reading detective fiction - known as "polars" in French or "Krimis" in German. Losing myself in a book was one of the few ways I could switch off from the pressures, pleasures and stresses of parish ministry. Because crime novels are not serious reading it also gives me a gentle guilty thrill to be reading something rather frivolous.
A German colleague once told me that he thought clergy enjoyed detective fiction because of the relatively straightforward resolution of ethical issues, and the classic combat between good and evil. Which just goes to show it really is pure escapism from parish and church politics, real life tends to not find such easy resolution. But reading it is great therapy.
Of course once about 10 years ago I did begin to try writing a bit of clergy detective fiction myself. This too was pure therapy. A difficult member of my eldership occurred as a corpse on page one. The sleuth was a female cleric called, rather predictably perhaps, Gloria, but I never did get beyond page three I think.
So I have to admit that the gentle idle pleasures of reading not entirely serious literature sometimes gives added meaning to my life. And of course some of the better crime novels have serious, campaigning themes to them as well - Kennedy's Brain is one.
Perhaps one day I'll be driven to write again and Gloria will rise from the ashes of my rather lurid clerical imagination.