Here is an idea for a contemporary hit TV show: Father Marple, a religio-transvestite stigmatic spinster who solves crime conundrums while dressed as a priest. Nicknamed "Her Holiness" by the bumbling local police inspector, Father Marple flounces around the pretty yet blood-soaked village of Chesterton wearing a pink cassock and high heels, dispensing justice and absolution and selling the occasional indulgence to the gullible. Episode One could be called The Razor-Sharp Rosary.
Meanwhile, there is a fancy cheese shop not far from my house, staffed by snooty gourmands in white smocks and Dutch-boy caps. Here they will correct your pronunciation of 'gouda' ("howda" more or less) then wince if you can't tell the difference between mozzarella and burrata; and you stand in line behind Bleuchâtel bewitched customers with their noses pressed their against the glass presentation case like suction cups, waiting patiently for the cheesemonger to coax them into making a decision. Personally I just want whatever goes well with the red wine that was on sale at the liquor store. The cheesemonger usually suggests manchego or the aforementioned gouda, which I could pick for myself, so I don't know why I always ask his opinion. It's possible that, despite his condescending air of superior connoisseurship, he doesn't actually know much more than me.
And so I sit at my desk with discount red wine and the same old cheese, inventing Father Marple and the case of the Razor Sharp Rosary. A poet, noted for writing very long poems, has been found brutally murdered in a country house, garroted by a length of rosary with beads sharpened to a fine point. The only witnesses are two fellow poets, TS Eliot and Robert Merrill, but the bumbling local police inspector can't understand a word they are saying because he is unfamiliar with their many classical allusions. Only Father Marple has the wit to find the culprit before they strike again. But forensics have just discovered that the murder weapon belongs to Father Brown herself. Just who is trying to frame the religio-transvestite stigmatic spinster?
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