THE CANON IN RESIDENCE (British Mystery Classic): Identity Theft Thriller

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The Reverend John Smith is a conventional cleric, who learns on holiday he has been promoted to be Canon in Residence of Frattenbury Cathedral. While staying at a hotel he meets a fellow Englishman, who tells him the clergy are too divorced from reality. This stranger drugs Rev Smith and takes his clerical clothing, leaving in return his garish clothing, which Rev Smith is forced to wear for the rest of his holiday in St Moritz. However, because of this, he learns a great deal that the dog collar would have prevented. Meanwhile, the stranger adopts Rev Smith’s name and goes off gambling and quaffing vast quantities of champagne in Monte Carlo, to the horror of an Englishwoman there who writes to her friends in Frattenbury about him. Victor Lorenzo Whitechurch (1868-1933) was a Church of England clergyman and author. He is best known for his detective stories featuring Thorpe Hazell, the first amateur railway detective, whom the author intended to be as far from Sherlock Holmes as possible. Another Whitechurch’s character was the spy Captain Ivan Koravitch. His stories were admired for their immaculate plotting and factual accuracy. Whitechurch was one of the first writers to submit his manuscripts to Scotland Yard for vetting as to police procedure.