Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 14: Father Dowling

Father Dowling is a Catholic priest in Fox River, Illinois, and shortly after taking up his parish he gets a call from a panicked elderly parishoner. He tries to calm her down, and whatever success he has is mitigated by the parishoner turning up dead. 

It turns out that the detective on the case was in the same seminary class as Dowling, but left after a year. Together, the pair solve the mystery, the first of many that they'd tackle together.

Written by Ralph McInerny, the novels spawned the TV series Father Dowling Mysteries, with Tom Bosley starring as Father Dowling. Other than the title and character names the show didn't use much from the novels, as the setting was switched to Chicago and none of the stories from the books were used for TV.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 13: Simon Ark

Simon is a man in his 60s who gets pulled into solving crimes that are often related or tinged with the supernatural or occult. This makes some sense given his background: Ark is a 2000 year old Coptic priest who was cursed to spend eternity roaming the Earth (either for not allowing Jesus to rest while carrying his cross en route to the crucifixion, or for writing a gospel so pious that God couldn't decide if Ark should go to heaven or hell).

Ark was the creation of Edward D. Hoch, whose detective fiction included a few novels but was primarily focused on short stories. He had over 950 published, with at least a dozen series focused on different main characters. Simon Ark was one of those, with 39 stories in total (a Simon Ark story was Hoch's first published work). 

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 12: Dame Averilla

Dame Averilla is the infirmarer at the Benedictine Abbey of the Virgin Mary and Edward, King and Martyr, in Shaftesbury. While political unrest roils the countryside, Averilla has to track down a collection of herbal lore that has gone missing (hampering her ability to tend to the sick, one would think). She also gets involved in the perhaps related disappearance of Dame Agnes, whom many in the abbey believe is possessed.

If you noticed some similarities here between Averilla and another crime-solving healer located at a Benedictine abbey during the period of unrest known as The Anarchy, you would not be alone. There are a a couple of differences worth noting. 

The first is that Averilla has to also manage internal unrest between nuns of Anglo-Saxon background and the new, young nuns who are daughters of the Norman elite. We do not see this sort of tension at the Benedictine abbey in Shrewsbury, though there is some conflict there related to class and education.

The other difference is that there are only three books in the Averilla series, one a prequel. So if there is any ripping off being done, it didn't last.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 11: Brother Rodric Chandler

The throne of England is rumored to be under threat from Henry Bolingbroke, cousin to King Richard II, who is now back from exile in France. As tension between the two rise, a novice nun from Barking Abbey is found murdered, and the clerical connection leads the coroner to ask his friend, Brother Rodric, to help figure out why the nun was killed and who did the deed.

Rodric is reluctant to help, what with already acting as a spy for Bolingbroke. But he takes up the case, and as you might expect the murder and the political intrigue are related, and put Rodric in a difficult spot not only due to his loyalties, but due to the danger he is in if he's revealed to be in Bolingbroke's camp.

Rodric was created by Cassandra Clark, who has another, longer-running series which will show up later in this Lentorama. As far as I can tell the two series are not related.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 10: Mother Lavinia Grey

Either the abbess or vicar (or both?) of St. Bede's, an Episcopal church in New Jersey, Lavinia (or Mother Vinnie, as I've seen her called at least once) was the prime suspect in the murder of a bishop who was critical of her attempts to save her parish. But when she helped solve that case, she found herself using her newly-discovered detecting skills in other cases. Along the way she also enters into an on and off relationship with one of the local police.

There are, at least superficially, some similarities between Mother Vinnie and Callie Anson, the curate covered in a previous post. Both are Anglicans who don't always mesh well with the higher ups, and both have complicated romantic relationships with cops. Maybe the authors can work out a crossover novel? 

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 9: Jabal Jarrett

Freda Bream created the Rev. Jabal Jarrett when she turned to writing in her retirement, turning out 13 novels featuring the Auckland clergyman that every page I can find about the book labels as 'eccentric.'

How he's eccentric is another question, as I can find not much more than the barest information about the character or his debut appearance in Island of Fear. I did come across this page which gives just enough information for me to think that these books were never published in the US (and likely out of print everywhere else).

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 8: Rabbi David Small

David Small is the new, bookish rabbi at a temple in suburban Boston. It's not clear that he's fitting in, and a murder on temple grounds - in which Small is a leading suspect - doesn't help his popularity. But he's able to help crack the case by applying his highly trained and logical mind to the facts at hand, starting a series that spanned several books and a TV adaptation.

I read the first book in the series a few years ago, had mixed feelings about it, and haven't gone back to the series since. Part of the problem was that the reading experience wasn't great, as I read the book using Hoopla and it didn't format that well on my phone. So if I can find physical copies of the books I may be more inclined to get back into them.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 7: Callie Anson

After the tumultuous end of her engagement, Callie Anson is looking forward to what she thinks will be the quieter life as the curate of a London church (which makes her more or less assistant clergy to the person already assigned). It turns out that the religious life isn't that much more peaceful, notably when she interacts with other male clergy who don't think women should be ordained.

When one of those dissenting vicars turns up dead, Callie's friend and mentor (who defended her choice of vocation to the dead man) is a prime suspect. Callie turns to her faith - and some innate sleuthing abilities - in order to prove her friend's innocence.

It looks like as the series goes on Callie is less involved with sleuthing and more with bringing her unique perspective to what's going on in the parish. There are still deaths, but it's not clear from the synopses I've read if she's materially involved with the investigations. 

I found it interesting that the author of the series, Kate Charles, isn't English at all, but from the American midwest. Maybe Anglican parishes here aren't conducive to crime solving prelates.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 6: Dame Frevisse

Set in 15th century England, Dame Frevisse is a nun at St. Frideswide's, a small convent in Oxfordshire. She discovers a talent for solving crimes, many of which occur in or around the convent and the neighboring town, while later books in the series see her sleuthing farther afield, either while accompanying another nun on convent business or while abroad on her own business. The later books also delve more into current events, most notably the tensions that led to the Wars of the Roses.

Frevisse is related to Geoffrey Chaucer, and each book shares a name with one of the Canterbury Tales. She also interacts with some of her Chaucer relatives during the series, though usually as part of a subplot rather than the main mystery.

The series is attributed to Margaret Frazer, which originally was a pen name shared by collaborators Gail Brown and Mary Monica Pulver Kuhfeld. They stopped working together after the sixth novel in the series, with Brown retaining the Frazer name. 

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 5: Father Anselm

Father Anselm is a lawyer turned friar of Larkwood Priory, and as with so many of the people in this series, he winds up solving mysteries on the side. Unlike many of his colleagues, the cases tend to be re-examining events that have already occurred rather than something current. The first novel in the series involves a man who may have committed war crimes during World War 2, while another has Anselm look into a death two years previous that an anonymous death claims was murder.

The character bears a strong resemblance to his creator, William Brodrick (minus the crime solving, I assume). Where Anselm is a lawyer turned priest, Brodrick is a priest turned lawyer (who then turned full time author). 

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 4: Walker "Bear" Wells

Bear Wells is a minister in Sugar Land, Texas, an upscale suburb of Houston. His status among the locals is burnished by being a former University of Texas football player, and he finds his schedule jammed with commitments for both the church and the community. And, occasionally, dealing with a suspicious death.

Perhaps unusually for this genre, Wells doesn't have legal training or possess natural gifts for sleuthing. He's actually not that interested in playing detective - his focus is on his flock - but finds himself involved when the cases touch upon his family.

The series is written by Stephanie Jaye Evans, who brings significant personal experience to the page as the daughter of a Church of Christ minister and native Texan. While she appears to still be active in the Houston writing community, the series only has two books to date, the last published in 2013.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 3: Father John "Blackie" Ryan

Blackie Ryan - the nickname comes from his middle name, Blackwood - rose from being a parish priest to an auxilary bishop in Chicago, where he is the rector of the Holy Name Cathedral (which is the actual seat of the Archdiocese of Chicago). Among his less orthodox duties is solving various mysteries (almost all involving the Church somehow) at the behest of the cardinal, and often with the help of his Ryan siblings.

This series was written by Andrew Greeley, himself a priest from a large Chicago family of Irish Catholics. Rather than rise through the hierarchy of the Church, Greeley followed an academic path that saw him earn a Ph.D. in sociology and teach at the university level for many years, before transitioning into writing popular fiction and non-fiction books, almost all of which touched on religion or Ireland.

I've read a couple of his books and thought they were OK, though I've not read any of the books in this series.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 2: Sister Fidelma

Today we jump back about 500 years to the time of Sister Fidelma, an Irish princess and legal advocate who solves murders on the side.

Fidelma was born into the royal family of Munster, and studied criminal and civil aspects of the Brehon law. After completing her studies, Fidelma became a nun and joined the mixed Kildare Abbey (home to both men and women) founded by St. Brigid in the 5th century. It does seem that Fidelma joined more to further her career than to express religious devotion, as she leaves the abbey at some point and goes by "Fidelma of Cashel" rather than be addressed as a sister.

As the series moves along, Fidelma's legal work sees her traveling into various corners of the Celtic world and beyond, and getting involved in cases at the highest levels of society. She also winds up marrying the monk she often works with, Eadulf, with whom she has a son.

I've not read any books in this series, but I have to say I'm interested. 

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 1: William of Baskerville

Umberto Eco apparently wanted to leave no doubt as to the deductive powers of William of Baskerville, the main character of his 1980 novel The Name of the Rose. The name comes from both William of Ockham - whose Razor says the simplest answer to a problem that accounts for all the facts is likely the right answer - and Sherlock Holmes, as a refernce to The Hound of the Baskervilles.  And in case that wasn't enough, we also learn that William had Roger Bacon as a mentor, giving him plenty of opportunity to soak up his emphasis on empirical observation.

William gets the chance to apply his skills to an unexpected death at an Italian monastery, which the abbot asks him to investigate. When the body count begins to climb, William (with the help of the novice monk Aldo of Melk) has to figure out who is behind the deaths before the local inquisitor sends innocent people to their death (something William has experience with, having previously worked in that role).

This is likely Eco's best known novel, and certainly his best-selling (an estimated 50 million copies worldwide). If you've not read anything by Eco before, you should know going in that this is going to be much denser than your typical mystery novel. It's worth the work, even if you have to go back and re-read passages (which I recall doing more than once).

Or, if you'd rather watch the movie, cue up the 1986 film which stars Sean Connery as William and Christian Slater as Aldo. 

 As I was thinking about this year's Lentorama, I decided to take a look back at past years. In doing so, I was reminded that I've been doing this since 2006. A recap of each year's theme:

2006: Saint of the Day
2007: The Non-Canonized Catholic Person of the Day 
2008: 40 Days, 40 Churches
2009: Great (?) Moments in Catholics on Television
2010: Two Millenia of Pointy Hats 
2011: Better Late than Never
2012: Know Your Dioscese
2013: There's a Name for That 
2014: We're Ready for Your Closeup, Your Holiness 
2015: looks like I took this year off
2016: #Lent
2017: Lenten Observers of Instagram
2018: Second String Saints 
2019: Resurrect My Globe! 
2020: 40 Days of Food 
2021: Take Your Holiday to Go 
2022: It Happened on Easter Day
2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Apparently I started off the 2016 Lentorama with a comment that it was almost the year where I stopped doing it. I didn't even remember not doing it the year before!

Anyway, for this year I am not going to roll into It Happened on Good Friday, as if I've learned anything over the last two years it's that hunting for things that are reasonably interesting that happened on the given day is a huge pain in the keister. So I'm going to dip back into popular culture with...

Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

A Lenten review of priests, vicars, nuns, and other religious who dabble in whodunits. Tune in tomorrow for the first of your forty frocked felon foilers.