I love the clerical sleuth genre, which is actually a sub-genre of the amateur detective genre.
There’s something about a man or woman of faith matching wits with a murderer. That combination elevates the moral nature of the story.
Philip Grosset of the Clerical Detective website has identified 376 clerical detectives. That’s an awful lot of men and women of the cloth bringing criminals to justice. A clear case of faith in action.
Father Frank first appeared in the book Cleansed by Fire, published in 2012.
You Won’t Know How… Or When, Book 4 in the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles, is also the latest Father Frank mystery. And it’s a good one.
Father Frank has never been to the Texas Hill Country and hasn’t had a vacation in 4 years. His friend from seminary, Father Lee, is the priest at Christ the King Catholic Church in Magnolia Bluff, that idyllic little town on the shore of Burnet Reservoir. So Father Frank decides to pay his friend a visit and do a little sight seeing.
When Father Frank arrives, Father Lee has to attend to an emergency and Father Frank volunteers to do confession for him. And that’s when the fun begins.
Confessions are sacred. Their content cannot be divulged. So what do you do when someone tells you they’re going to kill you? You won’t know how, or when. But they are going to get you.
Then it hits you — the “confession” wasn’t meant for you, but for your friend. And you can’t tell him he’s a marked man. You can’t break the seal of the confessional.
That is Father Frank’s dilemma. And it’s a very difficult one. It turns his holiday into a hunt for a man determined to kill his friend.
In the course of his investigation, he befriends Rev. Ember Cole, the pastor of the Methodist Church, and Harry Thurgood, owner of the Really Good Wood-Fired Coffee Shop, and takes a special interest in their relationship, offering Ember some “fatherly” advice. That gave the story a tender and personal touch.
The book’s storyline is fairly straight-forward. What I enjoyed most was seeing Father Frank working out his faith to achieve tangible and rewarding good works.
Callan doesn’t wield a heavy club when it comes to his faith. His approach is rather matter of fact. An approach that works well for me. An approach that makes the Christian faith accessible and desirable.
You Won’t Know How… Or When is another fabulous entry in the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles series, as well as a worthy addition to the Father Frank series. Two birds with one stone.
Do you like puzzles? Or Wordle? Or just figuring out the instructions on how to put together the table you just bought?
If you do, pick up a copy of this suspense-filled whodunit and see if you can figure out how it will all end. It’s on pre-order at Amazon.
Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!
CW Hawes is a playwright, award-winning poet, and a fictioneer, with a bestselling novel. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.
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