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.