Patreon Post: Soeur Angèle and the Embarrassed Ladies (1955) by Henri Catalan

I first came across this author and his series when last reading another chunk of A Catalogue of Crime by Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor. They reviewed two of Catalan’s mysteries, Catalan being the penname for Henri Dupuy-Mazuel (1885–1962). Today’s read is part of Catalan’s Soeur Angèle series, featuring a crime solving nun. There appears to be 12 books in the series, but the majority do not seem to have been translated into English. Although out of print, Soeur Angèle and the Embarrassed Ladies is probably the most common to find copies of, as it was translated by Dell in the early 1960s. This is the edition that I read. Two other titles which made it into English are Soeur Angèle and the Ghosts of Chambord (1953) and Soeur Angèle and the Bell Ringer’s Niece (1957) (the latter of which feels like a very appropriate case for a nun to solve). The series received positive reception at the time. The St Louis Globe described this book as ‘an unusual thriller… amusing……