No sex? No violence? Julia Spencer-Fleming writes first-rate mysteries, even without the usual fornication and gore BY AL DIAMON
	A Fountain Filled With Blood By Julia Spencer-Fleming. Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Minotaur; $23.95; 304 pages.

I recently read a best-selling mystery novel in which the detective was a hard guy, the only thing tougher than his battered exterior being his unbending moral code. I know that because the author told me so early in the book, employing almost the same words I just used.

It’s a good thing she did. Otherwise, I would have assumed the guy was boring and stupid. Instead, he was just badly written.

The mystery genre is plagued with writers who are skilled (well, semi-skilled) at depicting unlikely sexual encounters and equally unlikely scenes of graphic violence. These authors are forced to fill their novels with continuous depictions of bodily fluids being splattered about in order to keep readers from questioning how so much wet stuff could possibly spill and spew from characters composed entirely of cardboard.

Fortunately, there are still a handful of mystery writers capable of crafting stories around believable people whose inner workings are revealed not through clumsy exposition, but by their behavior. One of the better ones is Julia Spencer-Fleming, a York County resident whose second novel, A Fountain Filled With Blood (if the title seems unduly grisly, consider that it comes from an old hymn), has just been published.

Spencer-Fleming’s creations may have battered exteriors and unbending moral codes, but their author has the talent to reveal their inner workings by making them intrinsic parts of the story, rather than through labored descriptions that have to be gotten out of the way before we can get to the torsos, both naked and dismembered.

Here’s her subtle depiction of her main character, Claire Fergusson, an ex-Army helicopter pilot turned Episcopal priest, at a municipal meeting in the little, upstate New York town of Millers Kill, on a hot summer night. A woman named Mrs. Van Alstyne has just spoken.

" Claire jerked in her seat. The only Van Alstyne she knew in town was Russ Van Alstyne, the chief of police. His wife, Linda, was supposed to be gorgeous. Claire made a futile swipe at the damp pieces of hair that had fallen out of her twist and craned her neck for a better view. "

Did you catch the thing with the hair? Claire doesn’t want to look like a slob in front of Linda. Why? Because Claire has the hots for Linda’s husband. But Claire is a priest, and although her exterior is more disheveled than battered, she has the requisite rigid moral code that prevents her from humping a married man.

Nevertheless, the sexual tension between the priest and the cop is a constant presence in the book. Which, oddly enough, has the effect of making this story a lot sexier than more explicit scenes in any number of dreary bestsellers. Sometimes less really is more.

Spencer-Fleming applies that same maxim to the violence in her story. The book opens with one of the most brutal gay bashings I have ever read. Or perhaps I should say haven’t read because Spencer-Fleming doesn’t describe it. She just provides enough hints to allow the reader’s imagination to do the dirty work:

" In front of him, the headlights illuminated a swath of achingly green corn, cut off from the shoulder of the road by a sagging fence of barbed wire twisted around rough posts. His door was yanked open, and he wanted to think of Paul, to think of his children, but the only thing in his head was how the fence looked like the one on the cover of Time, like the one Matthew Shepard died on, and he was going to die now, too, and it was going to hurt more than anything.

" ‘C’mere, faggot,’ one of them said as he was dragged from his seat. And the pain began. "

That’s all the author tells you, but it’s sufficient.

There’s another attack. Then a murder. These crimes are linked to a huge development planned for the outskirts of town. Claire exercises restraint in her relationship with Russ Van Alstyne, but can’t rein in her curiosity about who’s attacking gay men and why. Before long, she moves from comforting the afflicted to afflicting the perpetrators.

It’s not the lack of explicit sex and violence that makes Spencer-Fleming’s books unfashionable in today’s mystery market. She’s such a good storyteller, the absence of skin and bone is scarcely noticeable amid her deft handling of tension, action, and humor.

What really makes these books unfashionable is her focus on Claire’s job. The priest’s faith is central to her character, so there are Bible quotes aplenty and frequent resorts to prayer. Not since Father Brown and Rabbi David Small has God played such a central role in a murder mystery. And not until Claire Fergusson has there been a worthy successor to those classic series.

Even so, the average Christian Civic League member would probably dismiss this novel as liberal hogwash (there are sympathetic homosexual characters, and Claire’s theology is well to the left of center). Readers with more open minds shouldn’t find the references to God and Jesus any more disconcerting than the average detective story’s invocations of booze and broads.

A Fountain Filled With Blood (and its predecessor, In the Bleak Midwinter) may disappoint hard-boiled fans of the explicit, but they can always pick up a copy of something like Let’s Slice Up A Prostitute’s Pancreas.

It’s probably over in the bestseller section. Where, if there really is a God, Spencer-Fleming’s latest ought to soon reside.

Al Diamon writes the column " Politics and Other Mistakes. " He can be emailed at ishmaelia@gwi.net

Julia Spencer-Fleming reads, with Kate Clark Flora and Lea Wait, at Nonesuch Books, in South Portland, May 14. Call (207) 799-2659.