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).