Genre fiction is full of stock characters. They’re so common that it’s actually an event to encounter a character who doesn’t fall into some kind of recognizable category. It can be comfortable to slide into a world of familiar tropes and character types, and genre readers often have expectations about what they’ll find in their particular brand of fiction.

But it is a pleasure when I meet someone in a book that is more than their stereotype. And today I met Clare Fergusson. Clare is an Episcopal priest who used to be a helicopter pilot in the Army.  Not too many of those around, at least to my knowledge! She’s a Southerner whose parish is in a small town in upstate New York- an obvious outsider. There’s a lot going on under the surface in her community, and I saw many stereotypes get turned on their heads, or at least shaken sideways.

Clare is  one of the two main characters in a mystery/suspense series by Julia Spencer-Fleming, and the book I met her in is the first in the series, In the Bleak Midwinter(her newest book, One Was A Soldier, has just been released). Spencer-Fleming could have played it safe and written a “cozy”, with a sleuthing priest- there are lots of mystery-solving nuns, rabbis, and priests. Instead she created a complicated person, and because of that I was kept guessing about how she, and other characters, would act, until the very end. And I loved it.

It’s so rare to find characters who are so filled with contradictory parts, characters who can drive the story without slowing it down, and it’s such a pleasure. I sat in a waiting room for five hours this afternoon, and I am glad to have had the company.

So, how about you? Have you met any good characters lately?