A Cardinal Offense: A Father Dowling Mystery - Hardcover

McInerny, Ralph M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312112831 ISBN 13: 9780312112837

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1994

Synopsis

When a friend gives him tickets to the Notre Dame-USC football game and a Vatican cardinal asks to meet him there for a conference, Father Dowling travels to Indiana, where the visiting cardinal is kidnapped during the game.

About this title

About the Author

Ralph McInerny has taught philosophy for thirty-nine years at the University of Notre Dame, where he is director of the Jacques Maritain Center.

Reviews

In the 17th Father Dowling mystery (following Seed of Doubt), McInerney delivers a history of the American Catholic Church's stand on marriage and separation, the Vatican's view of this stance and some varying attitudes of priests and laity. Suspense suffers from the process. A man, pursuing an annulment, and his wife, who is opposed, meet separately with Fr. Dowling in St. Hilary's rectory on the same day that the priest receives two surprise tickets to the next Notre Dame-Southern California football game. The husband says his wife was never really a Catholic; she insists that the 30-year marriage and the couple's grown children remain valid. After the man is murdered, Dowling and his cop friend Phil Keegan consider possible suspects, including the victim's brother-in-law, who has been arrested for the crime, and the couple's son, a religious fanatic who has confessed to the murder. Dowling, who has agreed to attend a meeting of the Bishop's Committee on Marriage and the Family in return for the tickets, has misgivings as game day approaches. With a heavy hand, McInerny intertwines the two plots in a tale likely to disappoint the good father's most ardent fans.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

McInerny, who's alternated lately between dark-hued character studies (Mom and Dead, 1993, etc.) and his Father Roger Dowling mysteries, tries his hand at a combination plate in this generously fashioned, punishingly paced look at the epidemic of annulled marriages in the US Church. The story kicks off when Father Dowling's offered a pair of coveted USCNotre Dame tickets designed to lure him to a South Bend, Ind., conference whose special guest will be iron-willed conservative Cardinal Josef Hildebrand. Before he can get to the 45-yard line, though, Father Dowling, recently escaped from the local marriage tribunal that grants annulments, will have to listen to Michael Geary and Maureen Furey accuse each other of ruining their marriage, then get updates every hour after Geary--who's already weathered an organist's accusation of unwanted sexual advances--is found dead (strangled? poisoned?) in the back of his car. Surviving him are, among others, his son Brian, a self- tormented hermit who insists he killed his father, and his brother- in-law, Gordon Furey, the police suspect, who exonerates himself by getting killed in the back of his car. Also on hand are Catherine Burger, Geary's sweetie; her son Freddy, president of Victims of Canon Law; somebody who has an unaccountable attachment to plastic dashboard madonnas; and the world's most inept kidnapper. McInerny's attempt to move in on Andrew Greeley territory- -surely a crossroads in his distinguished career--doesn't quite come off: His convincingly troubled supporting cast keeps running away with--or from--the routine whodunit, as if they'd just as soon be rid of Father Dowling and all his works. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

After 16 installments, McInerny's Father Dowling series has shown signs of growing long in the tooth. This latest, in which Father D. comes to the rescue of a visiting cardinal kidnapped during a college football game, may contain enough popular elements to revive the series.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Father Roger Dowling, Roman Catholic priest and amateur sleuth, is astounded by his good fortune upon receiving two complimentary tickets to the eagerly anticipated Notre Dame-USC football game. After he is informed by his bishop that he will also be obliged to attend a confidential meeting of the controversial Committee on Marriage and the Family while in South Bend, Father Dowling realizes he is expected to pay a high price for his bounty. When a former parishioner tenaciously determined to procure an annulment is murdered and a high-ranking Vatican official is kidnapped from the conference, Roger and his best friend, Captain Phil Keegan of the Fox River police department, become entangled in a perilous and perplexing homicide investigation set within the picturesque confines of the Notre Dame campus. Another masterful mystery in a popular series combining criminology and theology. Margaret Flanagan

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312112831
• ISBN 13: 9780312112837
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 372