Intrigue and confusion surround the murder of eccentric Brother Popov, a Russian Orthodox monk found inside his locked office at the divinity school in Chicago. Bishop Blackie Ryan, a priest who is also an amateur detective, is dispatched by the Cardinal to solve the locked-door mystery. Narrator Paul Michael's crisp delivery, academic sounding tones, and Russian accents define the characters. But even deft narration can't save this convoluted tale, slowed by back story and a romance irrelevant to the plot. Even gunfire and a missing journal with keys to the mystery don't move this story forward. This one's a disappointment to Greeley fans. G.D.W. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine--
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From Booklist
The inestimable Bishop Blackie Ryan, nondescript assistant to Chicago cardinal Sean Cronin and Irish American sleuth par excellence, returns in a new mystery steeped in theological arcana and academic ambiguity. When an eccentric but harmless Russian Orthodox monk is executed Mob style in his locked university office, Blackie is commissioned by Cardinal Cronin to undertake a discreet investigation. As the seemingly invisible little bishop pokes around in a particularly thorny religious thicket, it begins to appear that the victim had three separate identities: a Benedictine monk from Poland, a Russian Orthodox prelate and visiting professor, and a secretly appointed Roman Catholic cardinal. Then Blackie discovers that the decapitated corpse is actually a body double and that the real Brother Semyon is being held captive by a semi-legitimate religious cult worried that the charismatic cleric is determined to publish his potentially incendiary memoirs. Greeley pokes good-natured fun at the staid University of Chicago--an institution he has been associated with for years--as he interweaves both spiritual and educational topics into another supremely entertaining adventure.
Margaret FlanaganCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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